
SPEECH 



OP 



HON. C. C. CLAY, JR., OF ALABAMA, 



ON THE 



CONTEST IN KANSAS 



AND 



THE PLANS AND PURPOSES OF BLACK REPUBLICANISM; 



DELIVERED 



IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, APRIL 21, 1856. 



WASHINGTON: 
PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 
■ ";«K 1856. 

been hitherto . 
picion. Wlven ciu 
4hey neither name him i. 



\ 



AFFAIRS OF KANSAS-SLAVEHY QUESTION. 



The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under 
consideration the bill to authorize the people of the Terri- 
tory of Kansas to form a constitution and State »overniiwnt, 
preparatory to theit admission into the Union wlien they 
have the requisite population — 

Mr. CLAY said: Mr. President, this debate, 
on the part of the advocates of insurrection in 
Kansas, has been worthy of their cause. Prom 
its inauguration by the Senator &om New Hamp- 
shire, [Mr. Hale,] in his furious onslaught upon 
the President's annual message, down to the 
attempt to foist upon the Senate the spurious 
memorial of the amateur Legislature at Topeka, 
they have displayed more personal, partisan, and 
sectional asperity, than I have ever witnessed on 
this floor. They seem not to desire to restore 
peace, to preserve order, and sustain the laws, 
but to incTea-se dissension, create disorder, and 
subvert the laws of that Territory. They appear 
not as impartial arbiters; of this great con troversy , 
but as zealous advocates with contingent fees 
Testing on its decision. Determined to know and 
to present but oKe sid«,they concede no violation 
of law, order, jnorality, or propriety, by their 
clients. Instead of exhibiting the impartiality, 
•dignity, and sobriety of an Areopagus, in whose 
justice and judgment contending States may con- 
fide, they have betrayed the rancorous prejudice 
■of sectional bigotry, and the blind passion of 
selfish partisanship. They have assailed the 
reputations not only of those who have appeared 
as prominent advocates of slavery in Kansas, 
but even of those who have espoused neither 
•side, but have striven to stay the hand of violence 
and to do justice to both parties. The newspaper 
contributions of hireling and anonymous writers 
have been gravely paraded as testimony on which 
to decide this great issue, and with which to de- 
fame men whose integrity and patriotism have 
been hitherto without reproach and above sus- 
picion. When challenged to give their author, 
they neither name him nor indorse his statement; 



but admit their high esteem for the man whom 
they aid in traducing. They seek to injure, and 
to sliirk responsibility 

" Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike." 

The President has been assailed with a bitter- 
ness characteristic rather of personal enmity 
than political antagonism.' 

The Missourians have been spoken of as for- 
eign and barbarous enemies, rather than as fel- 
low-citizens, descended from a common ancestry 
and devoted to the same civil and political des- 
tiny. 

The South has been assailed as aggressive 
and overbearing; acquiring territory, or giving it 
away to aggrandize herself, and appropriating 
federal property and offices to her own use ^ and 
to the exclusion of the North. 

The North has not escaped detraction by her 
own sons; for they allege that she has always 
had venal men in market, ready to sell themselves 
to serve the ambitious purposes of the South. 
Those who proclaim the infamy of their own 
household must share the shame and endure 
suspicion; and when they wantonly and mali- 
ciously charge members of their own family with) 
selling themselves, people will suspeijt that they; 
have escaped that debasement only for want of a 
purchaser. 

The President needs not the shield of another 
to protect hini, against the missiles of their malice, 
ana is more honored by their censure than their 
praise. Covered in the complete panoply of 
truth, he has no vulnerable point exposed — not 
even a tender heel — which the curs that bay at 
him can, wound. If a love of country, which 
embraces the whole Union, and knows no North, 
no South, no East, and no West, in the adminis- 
tration of the Government; if a strict adherence 
to his professions of, political faith and observance 
of all the pledges with which he came into office; 
if a vigilant guardianship of the Constitution, and 



uncalculating vindicntion of its great principles; 
if these are marks of the true patriot, enlightened 
statesman, and honest man, then has the Presi- 
dent's official career illustrated that character. 
The people of his own section, deceived and mis- 
led by artifice, may unjustly condemn him in the 
present, but will in the future correct theirerrorand 
unite with the South in awarding him the honor 
due to noble ends attained by noble means. 

If the President's friends distrusted his fidelity 
to the Constitution and laws in discharging his 
official duty towards Kansas, the conflicting and 
contradictory charges of his enemies would fur- 
nish his vindication. 

The Abolitionists charge that the President 
approved the Nebraska-Kansas bill to open new 
iields for slavery; the South Americans, that he 
did so to enlarge the area of free soil. The Aboli- 
tionists say his Administration has been exerted 
to make Kansas a slave State; the South Ameri- 
cans, to make it a free State. The Abolitionists 
abuse the President for removing Reeder; the 
South Americans, for appointing him. The Abo- 
htionists say he was removed too soon; the South 
Americans, too late. The Abolitionists say he 
was removed for no official delinquency ; the South 
Americans, that he was retained after repeated 
delinquencies. The Abolitionists complain that 
squatter sovereignty is frowned upon and threat- 
ened with suppression; the South Americans, that 
it is countenanced and encouraged. The Aboli- 
tionists complain that the proclamation is leveled 
at Free-Soilers; the South Americans, at pro- 
slavery men. Thus do the President's accusers 
contradict and confute each other, and prove that 
he has displeased extremists on both sides by 
occupying that middle ground which is consistent 
•with the rights of both North and South, and 
;hostile to the interests of neither. 

Nor, sir, are the President's northern accusers 
<jonsistent with each other. The Senator from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] complains of the 
President for issuing his proclamation upon in- 
formation communicated by Governor Shannon; 
while the Senator from Illinois takes it to have 
'been issued upon the information of Lane and 
Robinson. The advocates of the insurrectionists 
denounce him because of the proclamation, while 
some of their clients thank him for it. The Sen- 
ator from New York [Mr. Skward] denounces 
the President as a tyrant, looks in history for his 

rrototype, and finds it in the person of George 
II; the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. 
Hai.k] seeks his similitude in a field more con- 
genial to his taste, finds it in the vulgar arena, 
and denounces him as a demagogue. 

Neither are the President's accusers consistent 
•with themselves. The Senator from New York, 
after his formal arraignment and elaborate accu- 
sation of him, as an accomplice of the Missouri 
invaders, virtually confessed the injustice of the 
charge, by failing to show the law the President 
had violated, or had not enforced, and by asking 
the question, "Cannot Congress clothe him with 
power to act; and is it not his duty to ask power 
to remove usurpation and subvert tyranny in a 
Tirrritory of the United States? " 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wil- 
son] sat out with the bold assertion that the doc- 
ument sent us by the President would " carry a 
gigantic falsehood to the American people," made 



up of "rumors of the hour." Yet, in his two 
days' speech of minute and elaborate detaila of 
Kansas affairs, he did not controvert, or attempt 
to controvert, a single material fact alleged by 
Governor Shannon. That leading men had placed 
themselves in an attitude of rebellion towards 
the Government; that they -were attempting to 
subvert existing authority and estabHsh a gov- 
ernment of their own, and with that view had 
formed a secret military oi^anization; that the 
execution of the laws had been openly resisted; 
that houses had been bunied and other properly 
destroyed; that pro-slavery families had been 
driven from their homes and forced to seek shelter 
in Missouri: these portentous and startling facts 
were not disproven, or seriously questioned. In- 
deed, in his apocryphal history of Kansas, he 
stated no fact irreconcilable with thoae set forth 
in the official documents. 

The Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] 
set out with the declaration that a challenge 
had been thrown down by the President — to be 
gathered from the remarks of the Senator from 
Connecticut — to which he would reply and woxvld 
show, " that the Preshlent had omitted his constitu- 
tional tin/!/," that he had not interfered '"'■■when there 
icas a state of facts that ivoxild justify and call for his 
interference." The showing he made was an 
extract from an inflammatory stump speech of 
Governor Reeder, published last May, declaring 
that Kansas ''had been invaded, conquered and 
subjugated." He does not allege that Governor 
Reeder made any official call upon the President 
for protection ot' the people of Kansas, or any 
official statement of her invasion, or, indeed, that 
he officially or unofficially called the President's 
attention to the invasion. He sagely concludes, 
however, that the President must have seen or 
heard of it through that stump speech. And 
after a formal parade of that to prove a knowl- 
edge by the President of facts requirit>g his inter- 
ference, the Senator conceded that he did not 
know that there was a state of facts to justify 
interference! 

Again, that Senator, on the 3d of January last, 
in his violent attack upon the President, admitted 
''there had been nothing in Kansas to justify bis 
official interference." But on the 28tn of Feb- 
ruary, the same Senator charged, that there had 
been a state of facts to justify and call for presidential 
inteiyosition .' In the former speech he complained, 
that while nothing had occurred to justify the Pres- 
ident's interposition, yet he had interposed, lohether 
justified or not. In the latter speech, he con- 
demns the President for not interposing, although 
advertised by Governor Reeder's stump speech 
of the urgent exigencies calling for Federal aid ! 
Thus the Senator appears as the President's 
accuser for interposing and not interposing, at 
the same time, and under the same circumstances, 
ready to prove the affirmative or negative in order 
to convict him of official misconduct ! One who 
did not know the man, would never suspect the 
identity of the author of the two speeches of 3d 
of January and 28th of February last. He re- 
minds me of a client of large resources and small 
conscience, who, when asked by his counsellor 
what facts he could prove, replied, " Tell me what 
facts must be proven, and trust me for producing 
the evidence." 

The Secretary of War has not escaped cen- 



i 



•sure. Nor has less of the blindness of sectional 
bigotry been displayed in criticising his letter to 
Colonels Sumner and Cooke. His accusers pre- 
tend to have discovered a discrimination in favor 
of Missouri invaders and against Free-Soil insur- 
rectionists. Far from showing in that letter the 
narrow and sectional spirit of his assailants, it 
is marked by a moderation, philanthropy, and pa- 
triotism they have not evinced, and can scarcely 
appreciate. If, sir, the omission of the words 
inv-asive aggression, in tlie peremptory part of the 
letter, was designed, why should the champions 
■of the emigrants' aid society object or complain? 
Havenottheirhirelingsentered that Territory with 
arms not fitted for sport, but war — not designed to 
kill game, but men? — and, with the fear of con- 
scious blood-guiltiness, and the cunning of fraud, 
they sm.uggled.them into the Territory in boxes — 
marked'* books, "or " carpenters' tools!" Are 
•companies of men, specially equipped for war 
in New England, less deserving the name of 
invaders, than the Missourians with their mere 
fowling-pieces? The arrogance of pharisaical 
puritanism might justify the former and condemn 
the latter, just as it would deny the right to carry 
slave property there; but those whose visions are 
not limited to their own little section of this Con- 
federacy, or who would not surrender to party the 
rights of the people of every State, can make no 
discrimination. If the Secretary had used the 
words " invasive aggression," the Black Repub- 
licans should, and probably would, have under- 
stood it as menacing them; at all events, they 
would have howled as horribly at their use as 
they have done at their omission. 

But, sir, the words were properly omitted, be- 
cause they were unnecessary and liable to misap- 
prehension and misapplication. The words used 
are coextensive with any exigency that could 
have been anticipated, or that can possibly arise. 
The colonels are ordered to obey the requisitions 
of the Governorfor " suppression of insurrectionary 
combinations or armed resistance to the execution of 
the law." What matters it, wliether insurrec- 
tionary combinations or armed resistance be med- 
itated and organized within or without the Terri- 
tory, by citizens of Kansas or Missouri ? When- 
ever insurrectionists or resistants endeavor to 
put their illegal purposes in action, by rising up 
within, or entering from without, they subject 
themselves alike to the consequences, and invoke 
suppression by military force of the Government. 
All who put themselves in opposition to lawful, 
civil, or political authority within Kansas, are 
insurgents, whether residents or non-residents. 
All who put tiiemselves in armed resistance to the 
laws, no matter whence they come, are aggress- 
ors, and if they come from without are invading 
aggressors. 

The orders are, too, in strict conformity to the 
act of Congress, in spirit and letter, adopting the 
very language of those acts in directing when, 
how, and for what purpose to exert the military 
force of the Government. Let the assailants of 
the Secretary compare the orders and the acts, 
and show wherein he has transcended, or fallen 
short, or departed in any degree, from the law; 
and if they fail, as they must, to show any depart- 
ure, let them blame the makers of the law, and 
correct its imperfections. The words " invasive 
aggression" should have been omitted, because 



they are not used in the law under and by which, 
and which only, the orders were issued. 

Again, they were liable to misapprehension and 
abusive misinterpretation. What do Senators 
mean by armed invaders from Missouri? Are we 
so far advanced in this age of progressive depart- 
ure from the provisions of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, that the entranceof thepeopleof a slavchold- 
ing State into the Territories is an invasion ? Or 
are Missourians, in Free-Soil dialect, foreigners 
or savages ? Is the entrance by them with arms 
in their hands, armed invasion or invasive aggres- 
sion ? Does not the Constitution guaranty to 
them, in common with the people of Massachu- 
setts, the right to bear arms, and freedom of 
transit into or out of the States or Territories ? 
And may not the militia of a State be marched 
into another State or a Territory where the 
standard of reljellion or insurrection is raised 
against the existing government? Does not the 
Constitution make this an obligation of the 
State governments instead of an invasion ? Do 
Senators mean to renounce this obligation, and 
denounce its exercise in declaring against armed 
invasion ? Do they mean to forestall and prevent 
the employment of the Missouri militia for the 
suppression of rebellion? If so, then they may 
find a pretext for censuring the Secretary. But, 
if they use the term in the sense used by the 
President and Secretary, as "invasive aggression 
against the organized Government of the Terri- 
tory," then the orders of the latter embrace the 
case which they say was omitted. The orders 
direct the officers to comply with the requisi- 
tions of the Governor, and suppress all insurrec- 
tionary combinations and armed resistance to the 
execution of the laws, without inquiring who 
are the insurgents or resistants, or whence they 
came> To have ordered them to prevent armed 
bodies of men from entering the Territory, would 
have placed the United States troops in conflict 
with the Missourians — the victors of Sacramento 
and Chihuahua, who disdain to conceal their 
weapons or play the part of assassins — while 
puling and coward knaves might have gone in 
without let or hindrance, in the garb of peace, 
carrying, concealed in boxes, the implements and 
munitions of war. TJiis would doubtless have 
suited them and their counselors, but would have 
wronged the brave and encouraged the cowardly. 

The entrance of armed men from Missouri or 
Massachusetts into Kansas is no invasive aggres- 
sion, if they go as law-abiding citizens; and the 
character in which they go is not to be prejudged, 
but determined by their acts after they enter. 
The Secretary was right in not predetermining, 
or authorizing his subordinates to predetermine, 
their character. 

The orders of the Secretary are public acts, 
and a legitimate subject of praise or censure. But 
the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] 
has gone behind the order and assailed the char- 
acter of the Secretary. He has impeached the 
integrity of his conduct and impugned his motives. 
Indeed, he denied the purity of intention and pro- 
priety of action of the entire Administration. He 
has assailed, in like manner, the people of the 
South. He alleges that they and this Adminis- 
tration are sustaining lawless men from Missouri in 
their aggressive acts — the lawless men before ichom 
the Secretary of War shrinks and bends ! Sir, it 



6 



would justly excite mirth or indignation, and 
provoke bitter words of scorn or contemptuous 
phrases of ridicule, should a brave and responsible 
man charge with cowering before any men, and 
more especially lawless men, him whose patriot- 
ism and whose courage have been attested by his 
blood, and illustratedby his deeds on the heights 
of Monterey and plains of Buena Vista. But, 
when one who has displayed neither of those 
virtues, makes such a charge against such a man, 
he should be regarded rather with the pity with 
which we look upon an idiot, who cannot appre- 
ciate an emotion he never experienced. 

This discussion has indicated the policy (more 
distinctly developed in speeches made elsewhere) 
of the self-styled Republican party. They are 
unwilling to hazard a contest for the presidency 
upon the old issues of abolition. They do not 
believe that the northern people are yet prepared 
to sustain them in an open assault upon the con- 
stitutional rights of the South; and hence the 
repeal of the fugitive slave law, the abolition of 
slavery in this District, the inhibition of the inter- 
State slave trade and other anti-slaver)^ measures 
are suppressed for the present. Even the wrongs 
of the slave no longer form the staple of their 
appeals to the northern heart. No; the wrongs 
and injuries of the North and the usurpations and 
aggressions of the South furnish themes for their 
popular harangues. The South, they charge, has 
been robbiiTg the North of its just share in the 
Territories, the treasures, and tiie honors of the 
Union. They affect not to be aggressors, but the 
aggrieved; and are implacably incensed against 
the President for assailing their false position. 
The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] 
denies that there is anything 171 the plans or purposes 
of the emigrant aid society hostile to the Constitu- 
tion, to law, order, or peace, or aggressive upon the 
South. And so do all of the party to which he 
belongs. The Senator from New Hampshire 
[Mr. Hale] denies that the North has ever 
" made (Agression or ever means to do so;" declares 
that she "asks to stand nothing more than our 
equals;" and alleges that all the men about whom 
he knows anything, engaged in the anti-slavery 
enterprise of the North, " have always disclaimed 
Mtterly the purpose, the desire, or the power to inter- 
fere with slavery in any State ichere it exists." On 
the contrary, he ali(;ges tliatthe North has always 
" stood on the defensive;" that, " in the history of 
this Government there has been no .A'or//i except to 
collect revenue from," and is grievously exercised 
about the territorialacquisitionsof the South, and 
her possessions of the high places of the Gov- 
ernment. 

The Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] 
denies there has been any disregard of constitutional 
obligations by the northern States, and especially 
by New York and Massachusetts, and charges 
territorial aggrandizement on the South; and, 
addressing his constituents at Albany last fall, 
made " the danger of extending slavery" his text, 
and expatiated upon tiie perjidious and insidious 
(Agressions and bold usurpations of" the privileged 
class," " thi- slave aristocracy," their sectional par- 
tiality in denying protection to northern wool, ivhilc 
freely giving it to the slaveholder's sugar; in giving 
millions of acres of public land to .Qlabainafor rail- 
roads, or oj gratuities, while not a dollar can be ob- 
tained for internal improvements in Jfew York; and 



the humiliation exacted of northern Representa- 
tives as the price of pensions to the old soldiers ! 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] 
takes as his text for a discourse in Faneuii Hall 
" the slave oligarchy and its usurpations," against 
whom he prefers like charges, and utters yet 
stronger denunciations. 

The Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Wade,] in a 
stump speech in Maine last summer, denounces 
the slave power as " asystem of outrage, aggression, 
and wrong," and declares the men of the North 
and the South are more inimical than the Rus- 
sians and the English, and that "the pretended 
Union, noiv existing, is all meretricious." 

Ay, sir, the Republican party was professedly 
formed to repel "southern aggression!" If its 
leaders can persuade the North that their asser- 
tions are true, they must achieve a sectional vic- 
I tory in the coming elections. They invoke to 
I their aid, not only hatred of the South as an en- 
! eray, vengeance for the wrongs she has inflicted, 
indemnity for past injuries and security for the 
future, but the uistincts of self-love and self-pres- 
ervation. If their assertions be true, it is not only 
the duty of the northern people to sustain them 
at the polls, but if unsuccessful there in wresting 
power from the tyrants who oppress them, to take 
up arms and resort to revolution, as has been 
attempted by the Republicans in Kansas, and is 
approved by their advocates here. The plain 
import of the sentiments avowed by their leaders 
is, that not only the people of Kansas, but of the 
northern States, are .suffering intolerable wrongs 
and oppression, and the inevitable tendency of 
their appeals is to civil war and revolution. If 
their counsels prevail, I sincerely believe civil 
war must and will come. Tlie Union was formed 
by the several States as friends and equals, and 
was designed to secure justice, tranquillity, and 
equality to every State. If it has failed to answer 
its purpose, it is truly a meretricious Union, and 
its days will soon be numbered. 

In order to test the truth of these assertions, 
to determine tiiis issue of southern aggressions 
and usurpations tendered by the Black Republi- 
cans, and to vindicate the President from their 
aspersions, I propose to state briefly the account 
between the North and the South. Let us see 
which section has added more, and which has 
appropriated more of the Federal domain; which 
has contributed more, and which has enjoyed more 
of the Federal treasure, and which has disturbed 
the tranquillity of the other or the harmony of 
the Union. The facts are neither new nor strange, 
but may be found in the documents published by 
Congress. 

At the conclusion of peace, in 1783, the States 
then north of Mason and Dixon's line had 164,081 
square miles; the States then south of that line 
had 647,202 square miles. Pending the Revolu- 
tion, the Northwestern Territory excited (as Mr. 
Madison expressed it) " the lucrative desires" 
of the northeastern people, to a degree threatening 
the existence of the Confederacy. That territory 
belonged to Virginia by repeated royal grants, 
as well as by conquest, achit\ed at her sole ex- 
pense and by her unaided arms. To satisfy those 
desires, quiet the contest, and secure harmony 
and peace, she surrendered it to the Confederacy, 
and the ordinance of 1787 devoted it to free soil. 
That surrender reduced southern territory nearly 



.mHeaii—itta 



one half, and increased northern territory nearly 
threefold . Northern territory was thereby swelled 
to 425,761 square miles, and southern territory 
reduced to 385,521 square miles. 

The Territory of Louisiana, next acquired, in 
which slavery was maintained by both French 
and Spanish laws, and guarantied in the treaty 
of acquisition, was, by the Missouri restriction, so 
divided that the North took (exclusive of Oregon) 
659,138 square miles, and the South ret£iined 
225,456 square miles. By that settlement, the 
South surrendered of slaveliolding territory to the 
North about three fourths, and retained about one 
fourth. But, including Oregon as part of the 
Louisiana purchase, the North took 972,605 
square miles, and the South retained 225,456 
square miles; thereby the South surrendered 
more than four fifths, and retained but one fifth 
of that territory. 

The acquisitions of Oregon, (if not included in 
the Louisiana purchase,) Florida, and Texas, 
resulted in a division by which the North got 
about 415,467 square miles, and the South retained 
about271,268 square miles. By that arrangement 
the North obtained about three fifths of those ter- 
ritories. 

The Mexican conquests engrossed by the 
North, added to her limits about 401,838 square 
miles. The South has grown from 647,202 to 
882,245 square miles; having added but 235,043 
square miles to her area since 1783. In the same 
time, the North, from 164,081, has grown to 
1,903,204 square miles; having added in the same 
time, 1,738,123 square miles to her limits. The 
South has increased less than fifty per cent., the 
North near 1,100 percent, in territorial area since 
the Revolution. The South commenced with 
more than four times the territory of the North; 
the North now has near two and a half times the 
territory of the South. The Federal Govern- 
ment never held one foot of territory east of the 
Rocky Mountains that was free soil when ac- 
quired; and, indeed, I question whether she ever 
held any west of them that was free soil. The 
northern States never ceded one foot of territory 
to the United States; and never yielded one foot 
of territory, that was free soil when acquired, to 
the use of the South, but have retained it all. 

The South has ceded, of her own exclusive 
territory, 261,671 square miles, and has relin- 
quished, of other slaveholding territory when 
acquired — belonging in common to all the States 
— 972,605 square miles, and of slaveholding and 
non-slaveholding territory in all, not less than 
1,738,123 square milesp— an empire elevenfold 
greater than the entire area of the northern States 
at the peace of 1783, and more than double the 
entire domain of the States of the Confederation. 
When stronger and richer than the North, she 
magnanimously gave up nearly half her domain 
to hush the clamor of envy, avarice, and ambi- 
tion, and preserve confederation. Whenreduced 
by that suicidal act to a minority in both Houses 
of Congress, on the application of Missouri for 
admission into the Union, the North, for the first 
time, avowed her purpose to appropriate all the 
Territories to her sole and exclusive use, and to 
ijefuse admission to another slaveholding State 
into the Union. The South then yielded to the 
demands of dominating power more than she had 
given, in the prodigality of her wealth, to the 



importunities of dissatisfied weakness. She sur- 
rendered four fifths of slaveholding territory to. 
the North, and submitted to that odious interdict: 
inhibiting her from.holding slaves north of 360 
30', on condition of the admission of Missouri, 
and the extension of her territory south of that, 
line. Yet, in less than twelve months, northern 
Free-Soilers violated the miscalled compromise, 
by refusing to admit Missouri; and from that day 
to the present, have persistently endeavored to 
transgress that line, and to deny the South the 
enjoyment of territories and admission of States 
south of it. 

No impartial mind can contemplate the history 
of these territorial contests without being im- 
pressed with the arrogant demands on the one 
part, and the generous but unwise concessions 
on the other part. Instead of aggressing, the 
South has been retrogressing; instead of en- 
croaching on non-slaveholding territory, she haa 
been surrendering slaveholding territory; instead 
of demanding and exercising equal participancy 
in the common domain, she has been conceding 
this right until she seems almost regarded by 
northern Free-Soilers as a mere tenant by suifer- 
ance. 

And yet, in seeming ignorance or disregard of 
these undeniable truths of history, we are told 
by some of her unjust and rapacious sons, that 
the North has never been aggressive, that she has 
always stood on the defensive, only .asking to 
stand as our equals, nothing more; and that the 
South has always been acquiring territory for 
her aggrandizement, and cutting off, selling or 
giving away territory at the North for her enfee- 
blement. 

But, sir, in seeming apology for the attempt to 
exclude slaveholders from the territories of the 
United States, we are modestly told by the Sen- 
ator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Wilson,] that 
slave labor blasts and curses the soil; and are assured 
by the Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. 
Hale,] with pious philanthropy, that New Eng- 
landers cannot endure the ^'responsibility of sxis- 
talning, extending, and perpetuating an institution 
which, in their heart of hearts, they believe to be 
lorong." The Senator from Massachusetts, in 
his desire to disparage the South and extol the 
North — common to all of his party — tells us that 
many southern men, emigrating to Kansas, per-i. 
haps a majority, prefer making it a non-slave- 
holding State. He utters this assertion, as he 
does all others, upon the testimony of interested 
witnesses, many of them hireling contributors to 
northern presses, as zealously devoted to manu- 
facturing public sentiment for the exclusion of 
slaveholders from the Territory as the Senator 
himself. That there are southerners of that class, 
is not improbable; but that there are, also, settlers 
from northern States who would prefer intro- 
ducing slavery, I am well assured, and fully credit. 
But the reason assigned by him for the prefer- 
ence given by many poor white men for free in- 
stitutions, is their experience in the South of 
"the malign influences which bear icith oppressive 
force upon free labor." What those malign influ- 
ences are, he did not disclose, and I neither know 
nor can conjecture. In this connection, however, 
he speaks of our artless, untutored, unpaid labor, 
and quotes two or three lines from an agricultural 
address, made by me last spring, in which I spoke 



§ 



of the exhaustion and impoverishment of the soil 
of portions of that State, " exhibiting the painful 
signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia 
and the Carolinas." The inference deducible is, 
that, like all of his school of politics, he means 
to impress the idea that it is slavery which blasts 
tlie soil and causes ail labor there to go unpaid. 
And, although he does not allege it, the implica- 
tion may be fairly drawn that my address siip- 
pHed him evidence for his assertion. I do not 
suppose the Senator ever read, or saw, the entire 
address, or more of it than the paragraph from 
which he quoted. Had he read it, he would have 
learned that it maintained that agricultural labor 
had not only been well paid, but better paid there, 
in the culture of cotton, than it had been in any 
field-tillage elsewhere; that it had enabled the 
State to realize about twenty millions of dollars 
annually from her cotton crop alone, and to become 
tiie largest exporter of agricultural products of all 
the States of the Union. Had he read but the para- 

fraph preceding the one from which he quoted, 
e would have found that the impoverishment of 
our soil was properly attributed to the constant 
and changeless cultivation of the cotton plant; 
and that the folly of violating inexorable laws of 
Nature was illustrated in the result. That this 
result is caused by slave labor, is a conclusion as 
illogical as unjust. Indeed, I cannot suppose that 
finy Abolitionist or negro-philist will concede that 
there is a Divine curse upon the labor of the negro, 
which prevents the earth from yielding her treas- 
ures in return for his tillage. As like causes pro- 
duce like results, it will be found that artless w/?i<e 
tillage has impoverished the soil not only of the 
South, but of the North, and of European States 
also, if there be any truth in agricultural reports. 
Countless proofs could be cited; but, as it gives 
me no pleasure to rehearse the errors or misfor- 
tunes of others, the statement may suffice. 

If the Senator had informed himself as to the 
true character and condition of southern people, 
and the products of southern soil, as evinced in 
our exportations, he would have found that his 
real or apparent triumph over her poverty, her 
decline and prospective desolation, was as ill- 
founded as malignant. He would behold her in 
admirable and enviable contrast with her northern 
sisters. He would see that she has fewer paupers 
than the North, in proportion to aggregate pop- 
ulation — that her field labor is better rewarded — 
that her poor white laborers have more land , more 
money, more of the essentials of ease, comfort, 
and independence, than a similar class in Ne\w 
England, or anywhere else. And if he would 
seek for the whole truth from credible and au- 
tlientic sources, instead ofpartial glimpses, caught 
from garbled paragraphs and sentences collected 
in Abolition presses and pamphlets — if he would 
look at census reports, commercial and agricul- 
tural statistics. State and Federal, instead of the 
New York Tribune, or the pamphlet of the man 
in Maine, who so toucliingly writes of the poor 
whites of the South — he would find that class 
have far less need of his tender sympathies tlian 
many nearer home. 

If the Senator from Massachusetts had exam- 
ined the exports of the Union, he would have 
seen, that those blasted fields that offend his vis- 
ion, and that artless, untutored, and unpaid labor 
which invokes his pity, yield about four fifths of 



the products of our commerce. He would have 
learned that cotton, rice, and tohaccOf the peculiar 
products of slave labor, furnish nearly two thirds 
of the exports of domestic products of the Union. 
He would have discovered that, of the average 
annual exports of about $100,000,000 during the 
last thirty-four years, while the non-slaveholding 
States can claim about $20,000,000, the slavehold- 
ing States are justly entitled to about $80,000,000 
per annum. But to present a stronger contrast 
between the values of the fruits of labor. North 
and South, and to expose clearly and conchtsively, 
not only the gross error and injustice, but the ex- 
travagant absurdity of the sneer of the Senator 
from Massachusetts, at the poverty and ill-re- 
warded labor of the South, I invite attention to 
the following facts developed in, and sustained 
by, the statistics of the Government. The pop- 
ulation of the cotton-growing States, viz: South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Lou- 
isiana, and Arkansas, amounting in 1830 to less 
than one seventh of the aggregate population of 
the Union, produced in the following dicade, 
from 1820 to 1830, in round numbers, $21,000,000 
more of our exports than all the other States. 

The population of the same six States, with 
Florida — amounting in 1830 to but 129,868 more 
than the one seventh of the entire population of 
the Union — produced during the next decade^ 
from 1830 to 1840, in value, in round numbers, 
$220,000,000 more of our exports than all the 
other States. 

The population of the same seven States, 
which, in 1840, amounted to less than one seventh 
of the entire .population of the Union by 318,000, 
produced in the next decade, from 1840 to 1850, 
in value, in round numbers, $39,783,000 more of 
our exports than all the other States. 

The population of the same seven States, with 
Texas, in 1850, amounting to less than one sixth 
of the entire population of the Union, produced 
in the next four years, from 1850 to 1854, inclu- 
sive, in value, in round numbers, $57,892,000 
more of our exports than all the other States of 
the Union. 

Now, sir, let it be borne in mind that, great as 
is the disparity in favor of the productions of 
slave labor in slave States manifested by the 
comparison instituted, it does not do those States 
justice — because I have only included the two 
products of cotton and rice exported by them, and 
excluded their breadstuffs, tobacco, sugar, and 
every other product, while I have given the other 
States credit for not only all their own exported 
products, but for much that is due to the States 
designated by name. It may be safely alleged, 
that the Union is indebted for more than one half 
its exports to less than one sixth its population 
contained in the eight States distinguished as 
cotton-growing. And as those exports form the 
tasjsof its i)npo)-/s, it maybe added, that the Union 
is indebted to those eight disparaged and derided 
States for more than one half its commerce, and 
to the entire slaveholding States for about four 
fifths of it. I defy the Senator from Massachu- 
setts to find any parallel for the exchangeable 
products, the materials of independence, of wealth 
and prosperity, indicated in the exports of the 
South. Sir, the rejjroach of poverty, of unre- 
quited toil, of the malign influence of slavo-y upon. 
labor, is made by uncalculating ignorance or 



9 



calculating malignity. It is an oft-repeated slan- 
der, which finds no substantial fact, an4 scarce a 
plausible pretest on which to stand. Il is one of 
the poisoned arrows not tolerated in honorable 
warfare, which the foreign and domestic foes of 
the South are ever discharging at her; and when 
shot by the hand of any son of New England is 
not only poisoned with calumny, but barbed 
with ingratitude. 

It is the domestic produce of the South that 
gives employment to the hands, and food and 
raiment to the bodies, of the people of New Eng- 
land; that has multiplied her population and mag- 
nified her wealth; that has built up her Lowell 
and her Boston; that has made her merchants 
princes, and her manufacturers lords of the loom: 
that has reticulated hei" surface with railroads 
and studded it with thrifty villages; that has en- 
abled her capitalists to indulge in European mag- 
nificence and Asiatic luxury. 

Take from New England, sir, the cotton of the 
South, and she would learn, in the sad reverse 
and rapid decline of her fortunes, the immense 
and incalculable value of that involuntary servi- 
tude which one of her Representatives, in inex- 
cusable ignorance or more censurable malice, 
denounces as a " withering, blighting, and con- 
suming curse." Take from her the fleecy fabric 
of the South, and in her waste water-falls, her 
fireless furnaces, her moss-covered mill-wheels, 
her grass-grown streets, her deserted villages, 
her unfrequented harbors, her dilapidated pal- 
aces, her untraveled railroads — in every spot, 
now full of life, and blooming with the vigor of 
commercial health and active enterprise — would 
be quickly seen the sad antithesis of death ! 

I allude to these facts in no spirit of vain 
triumph. 1 am constrained to do so by the wanton ' 
and ill-founded taunt of the Senatorfroni Massa- j 
chusetts. I could, too, easily paint a picture of 
the wrongs inflicted and sufferings endured under 
that system of servitude called voluntary in New 
England, which would prove that tliere labor 
often fails to get its just reward. But it yields 
me no pleasure to contemplate the misfortunes or 
faults, the errors or infirmities of my fellow-men 
— far less those of my fellow-countrymen. I 
rejoice rather in their virtues, their good deeds, 
and good fortune. I appreciate the intelligence, 
enterprise, industry, economy, thrift, and energy 
of the people of New England, and have awarded 
due honor and praise for their heroic struggles 
and achievements in every field of human labor, 
even in the very address the Senator quotes to 
misapply. I am ready to acknowledge, too, as 
in that speech, that the South is a large debtor as 
well as creditor of New England, deriving from 
her many materials of necessity and luxury. As 
just and friendly neighbors, they are mutually 
useful and beneficial; but as foes, neither lend- 
ing nor borrowing, giving nor taking, the South 
would suffer far less than New England. 

What New England has to sell, the South could 
make at home, buy elsewhere, or do without. 
What the South has to sell, New England cannot 
make at home, do without, or buy elsewhere. 
Cotton ie the staple of her existence. She knows 
it, as well as she knows the plant is grown, and 
its fruits plucked by the hands of slaves. Yet, 
with all pious horror of slavery, she gives it daily 
aid and encouragement, in employing slave labor, 



in rewarding slave labor, in using the products 
of slave-labor, in buying from and selling to the 
slave-owner — all for her own sake. How mag- 
nanimous and unselfish to refuse the slave-owner 
the privilege of enjoying, like herself, the profits 
of slave labor in peace and quietness ! How grate- 
ful and honorable in her to curse the giver, while 
she pockets the gift — to denounce him as a thief, 
while she receives and appropriates the stolen 
property ! Oh ! sir, if she sincerely abhors the 
" peculiarinstitution" — if she sincerely desires its 
overthrow — if her conscience tortures her as acces- 
sory to our guilt, so long as we are permitted lo 
hold a slave in a Territory, or reclaim him when 
a fugitive, let her ease her troubled conscience, 
and prove her faith by works of self-purgation 
and self-denial. Then will we believe her. Let 
her cease to buy, spin, weave, wear, or sell cot- 
ton. Let her cease the use of sugar, rice, and 
tobacco. Let her cease to buy molasses to con- 
vert into rum, with which to speculate on the 
vices, crimes, and miseries of the human family. 
Let her cease the carrying trade for the South; 
let her send no more vessels to our ports, or to 
those of Cuba or Brazil. When she refuses to 
make or receive anij of the profits of slave labor, 
or to deal with slave-owners, she will vindicate 
her honor and the sincerity of her pious pro- 
fessions of philanthropy, relieve herself from the 
reproach of saintly hypocrisy, and will escape the 
" responsibility of sustaining, extending, and per- 
petuating an institution which in her heart of 
hi-arts she believes to be wrong." Until she do 
this, she cantiot escape that responsibility. 

What injustice has been done the North in dis- 
tributing the Federal revenue, of which she has 
furnished not exceeding one fifth, or one dollar 
where the South furnished five dollars.' Have 
her military defenses been neglected, her harbors, 
rivers, and roads unimproved, her soldiers un pen- 
sioned — in short, has she gotten less money than 
she was entitled to? Let us see: 

Up to June, 1846, $838 76 had been spent in 
defending, with forts, each mile of northern coast 
from the river St. John's to Delaware bay; only 
$416 89 had been expended per mile of the coast 
from North Carolina to Mississippi, inclusive. 

In June, 1847, §60 01 had been expended in 
light-houses for each mile of the northern Atlantic 
shore; not half that sum had been spent on the 
southern Atlantic coast. 

The disproportion in expenditure for lamps 
was still greater. The South had scarcely half 
as many lamps as the North had light-houses in 
1840. 

Of $15,201,223 expended up to 1845, upon 
roads, rivers, and harbors, (excluding the Mis- 
sissippi and Ohio, which are common to both sec- 
tions,) '(^12,743,407 were expended in the North; 
P,757,816 in the South: being $2,805 for every 
ten miles square of the northern States, and $451 
for each ten miles square of the southern States. 

Of $35,598,964 paid in revolutionary pensions 
from 1791 to 1838, inclusive, $28,262,597 were 
paid to the North, and $7,336,367 to the South; 
being $127 29 for every soldier which the North 
had in the war, and $49 89 for every soldier the 
South had in the war; or $14 35 for every white 
person in the northern States in 1790, and $5 61 
for every white person in the southern States in 
that year. And yet the South furaished one hun- 



10 



dred soldiers out of every two hundred and nine 
men within her limits, of military age, in 1790; 
the Nortli one hundred out of two hundred and 
twenty-seven, according to General Knox's re- 
port; which lie concedes does not do tiie South 
justice — because, he says, " in some years of the 
greatest exertions of the souihern States, there 
are no returns whatever of their militia." 

Of invalid pensions, there was paid during 
the yrar ending IWth June, 1854, to the Nortli 
|303,G5:2 61; to the South, $132,087:15. The 
State of Nt w York alone, received quite as much 
as all the southern States, excepting Tennessee. 

Of pensions of all kinds, there was paid in 
the same year, to the South, '!J,459 ,965 84; to the 
North, S1,OG8,010 30 — New York alone nceiving 
$292,209 55. And yet the South has furni.shed 
more soldiers for ail our wars than the North. 
The South furnished, for the war of 1812, (which 
was fought mainly to protect northern shipping 
and New England seamen,) 18,288 more volun- 
teers than the North; for the war with Mexico, 
nearly two soldiers for one from the North; and 
for our Iiiiiian w;'.rs, a still larger proportion. 
And she has done this with hut little more than 
half the population of the North ! 

Up to 1850, there had been grajited to the new 
non-slaveholding States for internal imfu-ovements 
]8.5 acres for each square mile of their surface; 
to the new s/at-e-holding States 9.3 acres to the 
square mile. Louisiana had received 10.8 acres; 
Alabama 9.8 acres, while Ohio had received 29.6, 
anil Indiana 47.6 acres. 

Jllahama for all purposes of internal improve- 
ment has never received as much as 1,000,000 
acres of land, nor indeed for railroads 500,000 
acres, the assertion of the Senator from New 
York [Mr. Seward] to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing. New York i-eceived at one time in the dis- 
tribution of the proceeds of the public lands, 
quadru))Ie the amount, in value, of all the public 
lands granted to Alabama for internal improve- 
ments of all lands. Yet the proceeds of the pub- 
lic lands within Alabama limits have 
the Federal Treasury iiearly $20,000,000 

The bounties on pickled fish, and allowances 
to fishing vessels have exceeded '(>,10,00(),000, of 
which nearly every cent has been paid to the 
North, and chiefly to New England. About 
$300,000 is annually paid at the North for catch- 
ing codfish. 

A like disproportion in favor of the North 
against the South, in expenditures for postal 
services, for custom-houses, court-houses, pay- 
ment of civil ofiicers, and, indeed, every object 
of Federal care, could be shown. And yet, 
having received in fortifications t^or her defense 
more than double the amount expende'd on the 
same extent of southern coast; having received a 
light for every twrniy-odd miles, to guide and 
protect her mariners along her own coast, wliile, 
for hundreds of miles along soutliern coast, not 
a warning beacon cheers the storm-rocked vessel; 
having received ten dollars, in cutting roads and 
canals, cleiining rivers and constructing harbors, 
where one dollar has been given the South; having 
received four dollars in jjoisions where one has 
been paid the South; having received in grants 
of land for intrrnai improvement tiDo acrrs for 
one granted the Souiii; having received, in ab- 
solute bounti(A for her fishermen, more than 



brougiit to 



$10,000,000, while no industrial pursuit of the 
Si)uth his enjoyed any bounty; having appro- 
priated all of non-slaveholding, and five sixths of 
slaveholding territory, acquired, as admitted, by 
southern diplomacy, or southern arms, some of 
her sons complain that she does not enjoy a fair 
and just parlicipancy in the treasures and terri- 
tory of the Union! 

The Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] 
assures his constituency that "in the history of 
this Government, there has been no North, except 
to collect revenue from !" 

The Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] 
tells his constituency, that millions ujion millions 
are lavished in war and diplomacy to annex and 
spread slavery at the Soutli, while free territory 
at the North must not be looked upon, lest they 
may lust after it; that millions of acres of public 
domain are freely givi'n to Alabama for railroads, 
or even gratuities, while not a dollar can he ob- 
tained for New York harbors; that northern 
Senators must humiliate themselves, to obtain 
justice for even their old soldiers; that protection 
is freely given southern industry, while it is 
refused northern ! 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sum- 
ner] adjures his constituency, by their desire for 
economy in the Government and improvement 
in their rivers and harbors, by their hatred of 
tyraimy, which has trampled on them, to pros- 
trate the slave oligarchy. 

Sir, the aggressions and usurpations of the 
South have merely this extent: sin; has struggled 
with a proud spirit but feeble power in main- 
taining her constitutional rights and repelling as- 
saults; in resisting the appropriation of territory 
acquired mainly by her own diplomacy or blood 
to her own exclusion; in unsuccessfully opposing 
the extravagant expenditure in the North of four 
fifths of the revenue of the Government derived 
from southern toil; in exerting all means to pre- 
serve her slave property provided by the Con- 
stitution and the laws; in .striving to secure for 
herself that justice and domestic tranquillity, for 
the guarantee of which to all the States the Union 
was formed; and in winning too often, though 
fairly, and filling too long, though well, with her 
own sons, the chief executive otHce of the nation. 

The South does not seek to exclude non-slave- 
holding States from the Union; but only asks the 
admission of those who may choose to C(nne in 
as slaveholding. She does not seek to exclude 
northern men or their yiroperty from the Territo- 
ries; but only asks that her own citizens, with 
their property, may, too, be admitted. She does 
not deny the equality of the northern States in 
the Union; but only asserts her own. She does 
not demand any concession of northern rights; 
but only asks the acknowledgment of her ov/n. 
She does not assail or disturb the domestic peace 
of the North; but only asks the fori)earance she 
displays. She does not interfere with the internal 
affairs or social institutions of the North; butonly 
asks the privilege of being allowed to manage her 
own. She offers no insult, no injury to her 
northern sisters or their sons. Can the same be 
truthfully alleged by all themn-thern States or by 
their representatives on this tloor.' Sir, I sup- 
pose they did not weigh the truth of their decla- 
rations; yet the Senators from New York [Mr. 
Seward] and New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] have 



11 



both denied any disregard of their constitutional 
obligations by the northern States, and the former 
Senator has challenged the President to the proof, 
especially against Massachusetts and New York. 

Mr. President, it affords me no pleasure to 
criminate or censure the conduct of any State, or 
of any portion of the people of this Union. lam 
unconscious of having uttered a charge on this 
floor that could offend the northern people or any 
portion of them. I have eschewed all sectional 
controversies. But, sir, I should be unjust to 
northern friends, as well as faithless to my con- 
stituency, if I did not accept, on behalf of the 
President and the South, the challenge of the 
Senator from New York. With that view I must 
revive bitter recollections. 

Is it no proof of disregard of constitutional 
obligation to break or seek to destroy the solemn 
and sacred compacts of the Constitution? Among 
them, and without which the Union would never 
have been formed, and the destruction of which 
the Union can never survive, was that securing 
to us a representation of three fifths of our slaves 
Massachusetts has twice by her Legislature — 
07ice by unanimous vote — called for an amend- 
ment of the Constitution, so as to abolish this 
representation guarantied by tViat instrument. 
The South would thereby lose twenty-one of her 
representatives, and the North would swell her 
majority in the other branch of Congress from 
fifty-three to seventy-four votes. What end has 
Massachusetts in view, when she proposes this 
amendment to the Constitution? Is it for self- 
defense, or is it to injure, to despoil the South? 
Is there neither injury nor insult offered or med- 
itated, by this menace of that State to violate her 
bond of compact with the South? And will the 
Senator from New York reiterate his denial that 
Massachusetts has shown any disregard of her' 
constitutional obligations ? 

Another consitutional compact is that requiring 
the rendition of/itgiJire slaves. The Constitution 
declares that the fugitive slave shall be delivered 
on the claim of his master. The language is 
plain, unambiguous, and unequivocal. The pur- 
pose and the manner of its execution are beyond 
doubt, and were never brought in question until 
the discovery of that /iig/icr taw, of which the 
Senator from New York is a prominent advocate 
and exponent. The fugitive slave act of 1793 
looked to the agency of State officers and State 
tribunals for its execution. Massachusetts and 
New York, together with several other northern 
States, had, previous to 1850, virtually nullified 
that act by State legislation. The acts of the 
States named were specially contrived to defeat 
the objects of the constitutional provision and 
congressional legislation. The process of recov- 
ery was made slow, costly, and embarrassing, 
and a trial by jury of the fact of servitude was 
required. The Supreme Court of the United 
States declared those acts in conflict with the 
Federal Constitution. The same States immedi- 
ately after passed acts forbidding their citizens 
from aiding in the recapture of fugitive slaves, 
and in)|iosi ng heavy penalties upon the master 
for any disturbance of the peace in any attempt 
to recapture his property. 

Those acts of the States rendered the enact- 
ment of the fugitive slave law of 1859 necessary 
for the protection of our property. But that has 



in like manner been virtually annulled by the 
legislation of several of the northern States. 
Massachusetts, "the model Commonwealth, "has 
not only virtually nullified the act of Congress 
by her late legislation, but menac(!R with disffan- 
chisemenf. any lawyer who appears for the claim- 
ant of the slave; menaces with imptachment any 
judge who issues a warrant or certificate, or holds 
even the office of commissioner under the Fed- 
eral law, and menaces with infamous ininishment 
any ministerial oflicer, or officer of militia, who 
aids in its execution. Failure of the claimant to 
establish his claim by verdict of a jury, impan- 
neled under the direction of State officers, paid 
out of the State Treasury, and counseled by a 
State attorney, hired for that purpose, subjects 
that claimant to a heavy fine, and confinement 
from one to five years in the penitentiary ! Thus, 
in contempt of the compromises of the Constitu- 
tion, the decisions of the Supreme Court of the 
United States and that of Massachusetts, the 
slaveholder is, by her legislative enactment, de- 
nied his constitutional rights, aiul menaced with 
infamous punishment for their unsuccessful as- 
sertion; the seduction of southern slaves is en- 
couraged, and their reclamation accordi))g to the 
supreme law of the land is forltidd<'n ! 

Is it surprising, sir, that under the fostering 
Legislation of iVIassachusetts, and New York, 
and a few other northern Slates, companies of 
slave-stealers should have been organized in the 
non-slaveholding States, with branches in Can- 
ada, who make the theft or robbery of our pro- 
perty both their business and their boast? Tlieir 
predatory incursions rob us annually, according 
to the estimates of distinguished members of 
Congress from the South, of slave property of the 
value of $300,000. 

But this estimate is certainly far too low. The 
New York Times, the mouth -pi(;ce of the Senator 
from New York, boasts that, since the passage of 
the fugitive slave law of 1850, 35,000 slaves have 
escaped from the southern States, of the value, it 
says, of $35,000,000. "The most valuable slaves 
are those who escape," exclaims this honest 
editor. And he adds: "what interest in this 
country can survive an annual loss of »^4, 000,000? 
Here is emancipation without the help of aboli- 
tion." And tliese plundering forays of thieves 
and robbers, which, if committed by any foreign 
Power, would, in the days when the Union ex- 
isted in spirit, as well as form, have aroused the 
whole people. North and South, to war and re- 
prisals, not only escapes all punishment, or even 
rebuke, but receives the countenance and encour- 
agement of State legislators. State Governors, 
and their Senators on tliis floor! 

The champion and friend of the Senator from 
New York boasts and chuckles over an annual 
loss, by theft, of $4,000,000 of slave property ! I 
take his estimates as more reliable than those of 
southern men, because his associations doubtless 
afford him information we cannot procure. The 
Senator from New York, perhaps, can indorse 
his friend's statement. And the Senator from 
New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] mentions, with i!l- 
disguisi'd joy and triumph, the expenditure of 
<>30,000 by the Governnifnt in recapturing An- 
thony Burns from Boston ! 

But, sir, Massachusetts shall not be tried upon 
the testimony, or convicted by the verdict, of 



12 



southern men. Neithor shall she be acquitted by 
the partial and prejudiced judgment of the Sen- 
ator from New York. By her own mouth shall 
she be accused, and by her own judgment shall 
she be condemni;d. 

Massaohu.setls, which in 1G43 covenanted with 
Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, to re- 
store runaway slaves upon a mere ortificate, 
sent from those colonies, and secured for herself 
the same mode of recajUure of her runaways; 
Massachusetts, which in 1703, by legislative en- 
actment, restrained the manumission of negroes 
by exacting bonds of the master, to idemnify the 
town in wliieh he lived from all charge for, or 
about, the ni'gro liberated, because of his sick- 
ness, lameness, or other infirmity, and provided 
further, in case of manumission wltliout said bond, 
for pulling the negro to work for the benefit of 
said town: Massacliusetts, which in 17U7 j^un- 
ished with fine and imprisonment the harboring 
or entertaining of a slave without the master's 
consent; Massachusetts, whose own son, Na- 
than Dane, drew up and i))troduced into the Con- 
tinental Congress, that provision in the ordinance 
of 1787, for the return of fugitive slaves; Massa- 
chusetts, whose own State Convention, in 1788, 
adopted tiic provision for the return of fugitive 
slaves, provided by the Federal constitution, witli- 
out a single objection, and even with the approval 
of her patriot son. General Heath; Massachu- 
setts, which in 1788, in view of that same pro- 
vision in the Federal constitution, passed an act, 
inhibiting negro slaves from tarrying in her limits 
for a longer time than two months, and provided, 
in case of violation of it, punishment with s/ripes; 
Massachusetts, whose .son, George Cabot, as 
Senator from that State, assisted in drafting the 
fugitive slave law of 1793, whose Representatives 
in Congress voted for the same, and whose son, 
John Adams, as Vice President of the United 
States, signed the same; Massachusetts, whose 
Representatives and Senators in Congress voted 
for a law, suggested by the same John Adams, 
and approved by him as President of the United 
States, empowering and requiring the chief jus- 
tice of any district into which a slave might flee 
to cause his apprehension and delivery; Massa- 
chusetts, which in 1851, through her Legislature, 
while protesting against the fugitive slave law as 
abhorrent to her people, yet resolved — 

'■'That while Massachusetts entertains these views of I 
that law, slic claims no ri^ld under the Federal ConitUulion I 
to nuUifii, di^rc:^(ird, or Jforcifdy I'cvi-.f the j)7'o('j»!on.v of un \ 
act of Con^reis ; that she has alreaily, wliun such liglit was ' 
claimed by the State of South Carohna, oxpiessod iter I 
ojiiiiii^ii uimii it, iiwd she no:i' reajfirvis and rcjicats the follow- ! 
i ng resolution, then passed by her Lef;ishuure, viz : 

" 'Tliat the Constitution of the (Tnited States of America ' 
' is a solemn social compact hy which the jicople of the said j 
' States, in order to form a more perfect union, estahlissh ju,^- 
♦ticc, insure domestic tranquillity, provide lor the common ' 
' defense, promote the general vvelt'are,and secure the hiess- ; 
' in;;? of libi'rty lor themselves ami their po>lerity formed '. 
' themselves into one body politic, under a eiinnnoii ^overn- 
'mcnt -that tliis (,'onstitution, and the laws of llnrUnited 
'States made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made ! 
'under the authority of the same, arc the supreme law of 
*the land, anything; in the constitution or laws of any State \ 

< to the e(mtrary notwithstandiiru ; nudlhntiio citizen, State 1 
' or other mcinhcr of the liody politic, has aright, in anyihape, 

' or under ally jiyi-lcj-t, to unnulor }ircrenl the e.rccutioii of the j 
' said Von^tilution, laics, orticaties, or any ofthcnt,Cdxejdin« 1 

< in such extreme cases as justify a riolent rcxislance to the 
« tdii's, on thejninciple of the natural and indefeasible preroga- 
' tive of self defense uguinU intolerable ojjj/ressioii,' " — 



— This same Massachusetts, regardless of her 
public honor, of her solemn stipulations of com- 
pact and confederation contained in the Federal 
Constitution, repeatedly acknowledged by her, 
now solemnly and deliberately, by her legislative 
action, violates her pledged faith and international 
integrity. 

And in the face of all this — despite her own 
confession — the Senator from New York boldly 
denies that she has been guilty of any disrt^gard 
of constitutional obligation ! And the Soiator 
from New Hampshire, with affected gravity, 
denies there has been any eiggression on the part 
of the North. Indeed, sir, if 1 rightly interpret 
the sentiments avowed, and the puljlic acts of 
both those Senators, they not only excuse and 
justify the nullification of Massachusetts, but also 
tJie theft and robliery of our property. The Sen- 
' ator from New York — if I mistake not — refused, 
! while Governor of that State, to deliver up a 
I negro thief identified, and arrested there, on tho 
i deinand of the Governor of Virginia. 
! And in 1848 that Senator suggested such nulli- 
I fication of Federal laws by State legislation, and 
robbery and resistance of the master, in an ad- 
dress to the people of New York , in which he say s : 

" Reform your own code, extend a cordial velcome to tha 
fugitive ti'ho lays his weary limbs at your door, and defend 
him as you would your paternal gorfs — correct your own 
error, that slavery has any constitutional guarantee which 
may not be released and ou^ht not tobe relinquished, t^ay 
to slavery, when it shows its bond, [that is, the Federal Con- 
stiluti(Mi,] and demands its pound of flesh, that if it draws 
one drop of blood its life shall pay the forfeit." ' 

What Stronger commendation could he have 
furnished of the nullifying law of Massachusetts, 
or of organized slave-stealing, or of the murder 
of Kennedy, who perished in the effort to recover 
his slave in Pennsylvania? The Senator fronrj 
New Hampshire justifies both the act of Massa- 
cliusetts and robbery of our slave properly' in 
denying thi;re has ever been aggression on the 
part of the North; and, indeed, affects to find its 
warrant in the Holy Scriptures, judging from his 
quotation from Deuteronomy. 

Nor are nullification of Federal laws by State 
Legislatures, refusal to enforce them by State 
Governors, robbery and theft, the only expedients 
adopted to destroy the practical value of our con- 
stitutional right and legal inode for recovery of 
fugitive slaves. The general convention of Abo- 
litionists assembled in Buffalo, in 1843, resolved, 
that, wln.'uever called upon to swear to support 
the Federal Constitution, they would by mental 
reservation except that clause providing for fUgi- 
tive slaves ! Thus perjury and fraud are delib- 
erately resolved upon and proclaimed as pious- 
and proper means for wresting from us our prop- 
erly ! 

In fiict, the doctrine is commonly held by Abo- 
litionists, and perhaps by those Senators, that a 
slave becomes fVee by removal beyond the law 
which maintains his relation towards his master, 
and that the Federal Constitution does not recog- 
nize that relationship; and hence, that, whenever 
a slave escapes into a non-slavcholding State, he 
is thereby emancipated. 

If, sir, to violate the sacred compacts of the 
Constitution, or the solemn obligalionsof treaties, 
or tht^ laws of the land, designed for the protec- 
tion of our property in slaves; if to refuse us any 
share in territory, which was nominally free 



13 



soil when acquired, and to exclude us even from 
that which was slaveholding when acquired; if to 
invade and rob our border States of their slaves, 
and to refuse to deliver the fugitive, or the negro 
lliii'f, on demand, and to menace with the pe^ii- 
tejUiary the master who seeks his slave in your 
limits, bo aggression, then may the South justly 
complain of some northern States and their citi- 
zens. 

But aggression may be committed bywords no ^ 
less than by deeds — by Stales as well as by indi- ; 
vidnals. The slanderer or libeler is more detest- | 
able and dangerous tlian the robber or thief. The , 
laws of all countries give redress to the victims 
of the former, as well as of the latter criminals. | 
And does the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. ; 
Hale] know of no State or anti-slavery party, or ; 
man, in the North who has committed any aggres- ^ 
sion on the people of the South by words more i 
offensive and injurious than the predatory irrup- [ 
lions of those bands of robbers who hang upon ; 
our frontiers.' Is not our system of slavery ha- ] 
bitually denounced as & heinous crime in the sight : 
of God, which no human laws can justify, and 
no individual or State necessity can excuse or 
extenuate.' Has not this been done by solemn ; 
legislative resolves? Is it not represented as the ! 
most atrocious robbery and the most pitiless and 
cruel tyranny.' Are not the northern people ad- 
jured by their philanthropy, their patriotism, and 
their religion, *' lo trample .dllar, Constitution, the 
Union, under foot," if neccssavy to emancipate the 
negro.' Are not slaveholders painted as tyrants 
towards their fellow-men and traitors to God, as 
inhuman, infamous, and despicable as Algerine 

1)irates, or South Sea Islanders .' Is not a cease- 
ess and persistent eft'ort made to prepare the 
public mind North to loathe them as lepers and 
treat them as outlaws.' Are not Christian sects 
required to close their churclies against them as 
profaners of the sanctuary; civilized communities 
to exclude, and avoid them as engenderers of 
moral pestilence? Are not the aid of t!ie pul|iit, 
tlie court, the press, the hustings, the legislative 
hall, and the school, invoked to heap odium and 
infamy upon the heads of slave-owners, and make 
their very name a byword of hissing and scorn? 
Are not the purpose and plan of abolition to in- 
voke upon the South the curse of Nineveh : " / 
will cast ahomimdile filth upon thee, and make thee 
vile, and set thee as a ga;i;i,g stock?" I need not 
quote authorities to establish the fact, that the 
reputation and renown of southern people are 
made the objects of systematic and persevering 
calumny and detraction. But, sir, as there are 
some recent illustrations in the speeches of men 
occupying seats on this floor, I will bring them 
to notice to-day. 

In a speech at Albany, New York, in October 
last, the Senator from New York [Mr. Sewaud] 
took as his text "the danger of extending slavery," 
and labors to prove that slaveholders are a '^priv- 
ileged class," whom he charges with fraud, perfidy, 
and dishonor — with controlling the Government, 
domineering over the North, and preventing her 
from receiving her due share of the territories, 
treasures, trusts, and offices of the Union. 

In the same month, in another speech, at Buf- 
falo, New York, the Senator from New York 
indulges in similar denunciations, and says: 
" The non-slaveholder in slave States is allowed no inde- 



pendence, no neutrality-^ * * * a yhipi^ pistols, knives, 
enforce not merely their silence, hut their active partisan- 
ship,^^ [for sliiverV.] " Tlie ri^ht of free speech is lost to 
them, ttie rizht of sulfrase is calnclcss to them, the honors 
and rewards of public offi.ce are denied to them." 

This, sir, is the assertion of one professing to 
speak from personal knowledge acquired by a 
residence in the South. There is no difference, 
according to law and good morals, between the 
assertion of that which one knows to be false, 
and the assertion of that which lie does not know 
to be true. I care not which horn of the dilemma 
the Senator chooses, but he must take one or the 
other. Sir, some of my predecessors — Senators 
from Alabama— were non-slaveholders. Some of 
her Representatives in Congress, in former days, 
were non-.slaveholders. Many of the members of 
her State Legislature, at this day, are non-slave- 
holders, and many of those of past years were non- 
slaveholders. Doubtless, the .same facts may be 
predicated of all the southern States. Non-slave- 
holders are as respectable, as proud of spirit, as 
independent and tenacious of their rights as slave- 
holders, and no less influential. I believe a ma- 
jority of the officeholders in Alabama at this day 
are non-slaveholders. Being a slaveholder or a 
non-slaveholder is no recommendation or disqual- 
ification for office there. 

The Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Wade,] speaking 
to a Maine audience in August last, denounces 
slaveholders as a " handful of aristocrats;" declares 
" there is nomore liberty for a white man in the South, 
unless lie owns slaves, than there is for the slave Iwn- 
.self;" complains that the South has gotten too 
much territory, and "is now smearing over ivitli her 
slime the whole of the northern portion of this 
continent, with the intention of swallowing that 
also;" and declares of slavery: 

" It is all a system of outrage, aggression, and wrong. 
Slavery founded' in violence must always he aggrcisicc ; and 
the moment it ccnies to be aggressive it ceasci to be at all. 
That is it.s very lite ; its being is outrage ; and the moniKnt 
it erases to commit thL-se oiurases, that main.'iu it runs 
down. Tlierefore, if yon will ■.'o aloii^ with ns to restore 
things to tlie condition lliey were in previous to 1850, repeal 
this infamous I'imitive slave law, and restore the rights in- 
vaded by the Kaiisas and Nebraska bills ; if this is done, 
then vou will not need to demand, what you have a right to 
demand, indemnity for the past and security for t!ie future. 
Let us reston^ thiiigs to their former position ; for, until we 
do that, ourhonor is not viiulieated ; the sense of justice of 
our fathers will not be appeased until we, their sons, have 
driven these vntulals hack and made them restore the rights 
they have stolen from us." 

The Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sum- 
ner,] speaking in Boston in November last, made 
" the slave oligarchy and its usurpations" his theme, 
and after showing the paucity of slave owners, 
says: 

"Yes, fellow citizens, it is an oligarchy, odious heyoni 
precedent; heartless, grasping, tyrannical ; careless of hu- 
manity, right, or tlte Constitution) K-nnting that foundation 
of justice which is the essential base of every civilized com- 
i mun'ty; stuck together only by confederacy in spolialion ; and 
con^tiiuting in itself a miignum latrocinium ; while it de- 
srades the tVee States to the condition of a slave plantation, 
under the lash of a vulgar, despised, and revolting over- 
seer." 

After charging the oligarchy with taking the 
lion's share of offices and trusts of the Govern- 
mi'nt, and enumerating its usurpations, he says: 

" Fellow-citizens, r have said enough to stir you ; Kut this 
humiliating tale is not yet linished. Aw oligarchy t^Pekhig 
to maintain an outrage like slavery, and drawing its inspira- 
tion from this fountain of wickedness, is naturally base, 
false, and heedless of justice. It is vain to expect that men, 
who have screwed themselves to become the propagandists of 



14 



this enormity, uill he restrained ly any compromise, com- 
pact, harnfiin, or plizhtc<i frrit/i. Js the less ix contained in 
the greater, so there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial 
of human riVW-".-, that is not pUcinhi Invoiced in the support 
of an tjnHi/if^Dj!, whicli bcfiiis by chaiijiiiig man, ciciitcd iti 
till! ini!i<ii' of Cod. into a clKittel, and sweeps little eliildren 
away to the auptioii hlock." 

Wliat morn of ilcfamation, vituperation, and 
viliftcaiion could be cxpifsscd or conceived ? 
What worse could be uttered of Barbary corsairs 
or West India buccaneers? What Clirisiiaii or 
civilized nation would form alliances with such 
monsters of iniquity, much less fraternize with 
them as members of the same political family, 
united by common interests, and devoted to the 
same civil destiny? Wiiat man of the least share 
of the virtues which constitute the grace and 
worth of manhood would take such miscreants 
to his bosom as friends, or recognize them as 
associates? And yet, those who jirofess to abhor 
and contemn us, when speaking behind our backs 
to a northern audience, here, on this floor, and 
in this city, seek the society, and, when per- 
mitted, make tlie acquaintance of slaveholders, 
salute them as equals, cordially grasp their hands 
as friends, and court their favor with abject syco- 
phancy! 

Mr. President, I shall not deign to vindicate 
my constituency or myself of calumnies so atro- ! 
cious and so infamous. But I must say, that 
those who utter them are neither faithful friends 
nor frank foes: they deceive and mislead their 
constituents at home, and betray them here; they 
smile on us when present, and traduce us when 
absent; they 

" Wear Inendrihip's mask tor purposes of spite ; 
Fawn in the day, and butclicr i[i tlio niglit." 

Such is the conduct of one whom the Senator 
from New Hampshire [Mr. Half,] reverences as 
doing hf)nor to the Senate by taking his seat on 
this floor — conduct which he humbly imitates, 
if his visits to the west end of this avenue liave 
not been grossly misrepresented. Indeed, I sup- 
pose that Senator and all of his partj^ have 
indorsed those calumnies by aiding in tlieir pub- 
lication, and circulating them under their own 
franks. And, sir, the Treasury of the United 
States is surreptitiously used to defray the ex- 
pense of enveloping their pamphlet poison for 
dissemination through the mails. 

Sir, we are not only represented as a people 
worthy of universal scorn, and deserving uni- 
vei'sal enmity, but our total destruction is encour- 
aged and invoked by rallying to arms against 
us, not only all the world outside our limits, but 
our slaves and the non-slaveholders in our midst. 
To embolden our outside as.sailants, they are 
assured that we are utterly impotcMit for purpo.ses 
of resistance or defense; and to encourage insur- 
rection within, our slaves are assured of the sym- 
pathy of tlie world without. Th(> Senator from 
Ohio, in the speech from wliich I have quoted, 
ridiculing the idea that the South can be driven 
by any aggressions to dissolve the Union, tells 
the people of Maine that "it is mean and con- 
temptilile in noi-thern peojile to yield, as they 
have yielded, Ijefore this handful of aristocrats. " 
" Yes, sir," says he, " the humbug of disunion 
has done more to cow down the spirit of the 
North than all other things put together. The 
fear of a dissolution of tliis Union ! J\Ty God ! 
only think of it for a moment! A dissolution 



of the Union coming from the puny arm of the 
South. Six millions of people, witli three mil- 
lions of mortal enemies in their very midst, and 
no mechanic arts — not even the mainifacture of a 
scow to row themselves across the rivers with ! 
And yet they say, if you do not come to our 
terms, we will dissolve the partnership. Why, 
sir, there is not a business man anywhere, who, 
if he had such a partner, would In sitate to kick 
him out at once and have done with it." 

The Senator from New York, [Mr. Seward,] 
in one of the speeches quoted, after speaking of 
the many bonds of the Union upon the J^urlh, 
says: " the slaveholders, in spite of all their 
threats, are bound to it by the same bonds, and 
they are bound to it also. by a hon A pecidiarly 
tlinir mm — titut of dependence on it for their own sajiiy. 
Three millions of slaves are a hostile force comtantly 
in their presence, in their very midst. The servile 
war is always the most fearful form of war. The 
world irithoul stjmpathizes irith the servile enemy. 
Against that war, the Amcrirnn Union is the 
only defense of the slaveholders — their only pro- 
tection. If ever tliey shall, in a season of mild- 
ness, recede from that Union and provoke that 
war, they will — soon come back again." 

While " the world without" is thus aroused 
against us, and to "sympathize with the servile 
enemy," and the slaves within our limits are 
promised the sympathy of " the world without," 
these same men appeal to the pride, ambition, and 
envy of non-slaveholders in our midst to ndress 
imputed wrongs by subverting the '' privileged 
class, "the " slave oligarchy. " TIk^ Senator frora 
Massachusetts tells them of the malign influences 
which bear with ojipressive force upon free labor. 
They are taunted by the Senator from Ohio with 
the assertion, " that there is no more liberty for 
the whiteman in the South, unless heov/ns slaves, 
than there is for the slave himself;" and by the 
Senator from New York with the assertion that 
"slaveholders enforce their silence and their partisan- 
ship with ivhips, pistols, and knives." Tliey are told 
by others no less credible, though less distin- 
guished — high ofiicials of the emigrant aid society 
— that their labor is unrewarded; that slavery 
taxes and degrades them; that the slave States are 
of small value indeed to the General Government, 
and southern trade is comparatively insignificant. 
And to bolster these calumnies, not only is his- 
tory falsified, but southern men are vouched as 
witnesses, and their speeches garbled, misquoted, 
or misapplied. 

And these are the foul libels and incendiary 
appeals, not of the scavengers of literature, who 
live like muck-worms upon corruption, but of 
grave and dignified men, who affect tlie honor, the 
decencies, and projirieties of gcn</cme?i; of states- 
men, who aspire to make laws for the govern- 
ment of twenty-five millions 6f peojile, to mold 
public opinion, to reform public morals and en- 
lighten the public mind; of our peers, (nominally,) 
wliosit on this floor as the equals of all of us, and 
the enemies of none of us, as the representatives 
of equal, confederate, and friendly States ! If 
such be the eft'usions of the fountains of Black 
Re])ublicanism, what must be the infusions of 
its cesspools? 

Now, sir, I submit to honorable men whether 
greater aggression, or more wanton, or more 
base, could be committed against any society, 



15 



than such atrocious libels vipon the southern peo- 
ple, and such violent and incendiary attacks upon 
their domestic institutions? They arc intended 
and calculated to destroy all faith in them, to bring 
tiiem under universal reprobation, to subvert, 
prostrate, and annihilate them. And yet — 

" VVitli tliat dull, rootrd, cnllous impudence, 
VVhicli, dead to ^liaiiie and every nicer sense. 
Ne'er biuslied, unle.ss, in s'preadlng vice's snares, 
She stumbled on some virtue unawares," 

we are told there has been no aggression, no 
wrong done us; and the Pcfsu/ciins assailed with 
bitter invective, by those who participate in or 
approve these assaults, because, with true moral 
courage, and a just regard for our constitutional 
riglits, he alludes to those citizens of the North 
v;ho qfficiotisly intermeddle ivitk our social institu- 
tions, and who are permanently organized in associa- 
tions to inflict injury upon ws by xrrongful acts, which 
icould be cause of war beticccn foreign Powers, and 
only fail to be such in our system because perpetrated 
Wilder cover of the Union. 

The Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. 
H-vle] — the fViend and associate of our assailants 
—assures us that all the anti-slavery men he | 
knows '^ disclaim, utterly, the purpose, desire, or\ 
poircr, to interfere ivith slavery in the States where 
a exists." Tiiere are none so deaf as those j 
who u:ill not hear: none so blind as those who 
will not see. Has he never seen or heard of those ; 
among whom Lysander Spooner is prominent, i 
who deny tiiat eitlier the Constitution, the act 
of 1793, or 1850, requires the surrenderof fugitive 
slaves — who declare that slavery itself is uncon- | 
stitutional, and that Congress should, through its 
courts, 6acA"e(/ by military force, exert its power. 
to abolish the institution in the Stales; and fori 
that end shoidd arm, organize, and discipline the [ 
slaves as militia? Has he never heard of Philli])s 
or Wright, Parker or Beecher, sage lawyers and i 
pious doctors of divinity, who, conceding the con- i 
stitulinnalily of slavery, propose to trample on I 
Constitution, laws, and, if need be, the Bible, in [ 
order to put down slavery, and adjure the North 
to do so — )ieaceably if it can, forcibly if it must? 
Has he no knowledge of societies who annually 
announce and advocate the same propositions in 
their resolutions and addresses? , 

Sir, I was amazed at the declaration, even from ; 
the li])s of the Senator from New Hampshire ; for, 
notwithstanding his imputed addiction to trifling, 
and want of credit for sincerity, I did not think 
liim willing to go into voluntary bankruptcy. No 
one can doubt that the Senator knows many more 
anti-slavery men than any southerner does, wlio 
are willing, ready and eager to assail slavery in 
the States, and only liide the time when they think 
they can do so safely and efficiently. He only 
deceives himself if he supposes such declarations 
from him deceive any one else. I need not go 
out of this Hall to find those who have avowed \ 
anti-slavery sentiments as extreme as can be v 
uttered, and express the purjiose and desire to 
interfere with slavery in tjie Stales where it exists. 
The Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] 
avowed, as much as eight years ago, when he de- 
clared there were " two antagonistic elements of 1 
society in America, freedom and slavery" — " that j 
the party of freedom seeks complete and universal \ 
emancipation" — that slavery " ca»i be and it must\ 
be abolished, and you and I can and must do it" — ^ 



and advised the cautious and insidious, but re- 
lentless and persistent mode by which to " bring 
the parties of the country into an efl'eclive aggres- 
sion UPON SLAVERY." H(? did Hot define his 
measure of abolition, but declared that " when- 
ever the public mind shall will the abolition of 
slavery, the xcay will open for it." 

I think it was John GLuincy Adams who said 
there were half a dozen clauses of the Constitu- 
tion under which slavery might be abolished in 
the States. Who can doubt that a way would be 
opened, if necessary, through the bowels of the 
Constitution, to achieve the work by a party pos- 
sessing the legislative and executive branches of 
the GoveriuTient, and, thinking: with the Senator, 
that they could and must abolish slavery. Indeed, 
did not the Senator deny to slavery the protection 
guarantied it by the Constitution, when ho said 
last fall that " it [slavery] is in violation of every 
line of the Declaration of Independence and the 
whole summary of personal rights contained in the 
Constitution ?" And did he not invoke abolition 
even to save the Constitution, by declaring " sla- 
very is not and never can be perpetual. It will 
be overthrown either peacefully or lawfully under 
this Constitution, or it will ivorkthe subversion of the 
Constitution, together with its own overthrow." 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wil- 
son] avowed a like purpose and desire in a lecture 
at Boston, last sjiring, when he declared, with 
heroic egotism, " Send it abroad on the wings of 
the wind that I am committed, tully committed — 
committed to the fullest extent — in favor of imme- 
diate AND UNCONDITIONAL ABOLITION OP SLAVERY, 

wherever it exists under the authority of the 
Constitution." Where he purposed to abolish 
slavery is explained in his letter, shortly after, 
to Wendell Phillips, in which he says: " I hope, 
my dear sir, we shall all strive to unite and com- 
bine all the friends of freedom, forget each other's 
faults and short-comings in the past, and all labor 
to secure that cooperation by whic!i alone the 
SLAVE IS TO BE EMANCIPATED, and the domination 
of his ma'iter broken. Let us remember that moi-e 
than three millions of bondmen, groaning under 
nameless woes, demand that we shall cease to 
reproach each other, and that we labor for their 
deliverance !" Thus, he points to the slaves in 
the States as those for whoso immediate and itn- 
conditional emancipation he wishes to unite all 
the friends of freedom. His colleague [Mr. Sum- 
nek] has often avowed the same designs, and did 
last fall, at Boston, when, after appealing to ava- 
rice and ambition to prostrate the " slave oli- 
garchy," for the sake of the treasures and offices 
of the Federal Government, he adds, as IsJic 
crowning glory of such a triumph: "Prostrate 
the slave oligarchy, and you will possess the 
master-key with which to unlock the whole house 
of bondage. Prostrate the slave oligarchy, and the 
gates of emancipation will be open at the South." 

No one can misunderstand this language. It 
means that, when we are trampled under foot, and 
impotrnt for our defmise, those who have their 
heels upon our necks will be able to dictate their 
own terms of emancipation to the southern 
States. 

But, sir, why should I adduce proof of a fact 
which is as notorious as is the existence of an 
Abolition or Free-Soil party, and is known to 
every readingman in the world, except, forsooth, 



16 



the Senator from New Hampshire— taking his 
word for it. 

Nor are those who concedt> that slavery in the 
States is beyond the reach of Congress under tlie 
Constitution, and profess their luirpose to let it 
alone there, but yet avow their intention and their 
power to assail it in the Territories, this District, 
and wherever the national flag floats, less disposed 
or less determined to effect abolition in the States. 
They have the same goal in view, but propose to 
approach it by a circuitous instead of a direct 
path. They intend to constrain the States to do 
what radical Abolitionists propose to do by Con- 
gress or by force of arms. 

What is the purpose of nullifying the fugitive 
slave act, and the constitutional provision under 
which it was framed, by personal liberty laws? 
The Abolitionists respond: "Give the panting 
fugitive this inestimable right [trial by jury] and 
in every northern State he is safe; for where can 
you find twelve impartial men among us who will 
decide, on their oaths, that a man has not abetter 
right to himself than another has to him; that the 
blood which runs in his veins is not his own; 
that the right to liberty is not inalienable ? Secure 
this right to fugitives, and all the northeryi States of 
the southern pai t of the Conftderacy ivill be drained 
of their slaves." 

What is the object of abolishing the slave trade 
between the States? The Abolitionists reply: 
" Were it not for this grand canal of horrors — 
the 'infernal slave trade' — the dark waters would 
overflow and drown the;)j-o/ifa((/t'?icssof the system 
in these States, and compel them to emancipate in 
order to saii£ themselves from (Zes/?'itc((o»i." * * 
" Cut this infernal artery, the monster would die; 
starvation would slowly but surely consume him in 
his southeTn, and apoplexy in his northern, abode. 
Fifteen years would immber him among the dis- 
honored dead." 

Wliy aliolish slavery in this District ? The 
Abolitionists say, "The moral influence of it 
would pierce to the heart of the whole system. 
It would jironounce and sign its death-warrant. 
It would be the solemn verdict of the nation, 
decreeing the annihilation of this dark abomi- 
nation. Tlie highest legislative body of the 
Union representing the whole people would de- 
clare slavery unfit to live, — for let us not forget 
that Congress will abolish it, not because it has the j 
power, but because of its intrinsic wickedness. The 
act would speak in authoritative tones to every 
elaveholding State, ' Go thou and do likeivise !' 
It would write in letters of flashing fire, over the 
gateway of the national Capitol — ' JVo admittance 
for slavery !' The whole system would thus be 
outlawed, branded with ignominy, consigned to exe- 
cration and ultimate destruction.' " 

Why prohibit slavery in the Territories ? The 
Abolitionists say, " It is our Jinal hope for the 
extermination of slavery. Six or eight large States 
shall yet march into the Union with free bamiers 
Jloating in the breeze. Open the doors wide, and 
beckon in State after Slate from the J^'ortlnccst, and 
the General Government is in our hands. Then 
the peipelualion of freedom will be the great idea 
of national legi4ation. Slavery will melt away 
before its burning action, till the last vestige of 
it shall have disappeared." 

Thusare weassured by the anti-slavery societies 
in their annual addresses, that in all these meas- 



ures they have the same end and object in view — 

THE ABOLITION OF SLA V KRY IN THE StATES. They 

also assure us that they esteem as most eflicicnt 
of all these measures, the increase of non-slave- 
holding States in the West. 

What is the avowed purpose of those who, on 
this floor, oppose the admission of slaveholding 
States into the Union ? The Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts, [Mr. SuMKER,] if my memory serves 
me, said: " Confine slavery to iis presoit limits, 
and it will die of inanition like a spider under an 
exhausted receiver." Governor Cliase, of Ohio, 
said " it would localize and discourage it." The 
Senator from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] said the 
northern people "consider that the extension of 
slavery over more country is to encourage and 
perpetuate it. That the more it is circumscribed the 
less is it productive, and the sooner tvill it be emanci- 
pated." 

And, sir, I might multiply quotations from 
numerous high authoriiies affording cumulative 
evidi'nce of the same fact, that all of the measures 
proposed by those who disclaim a purpose to 
interfere with slavery in the States, but intend 
merely to denationalize and localize it, are con- 
ceived in the wish, and exerted with the expect- 
ation, that they will overthrow slavery in the 
States. The indirect consequences of the acta 
are the direct objects they hope to achieve. They 
seek the same end with radical Abolitionists, but 
by different means. The coursi; of the latter 
is less odious and dangerous than that of the 
former. The one is open, direct, and manly; 
the other, insidious and dastardly. The one 
wouldafTordan opportunity to repel the aggressor, 
or perish in the effort; the other would bind and 
paralyze us, and then starve us to death. The 
one offers no false hojies, but would destroy by 
one fell blow; the other eludes us with promises 
of mercy while flaying us alive. The one denies 
the obligations of the Constitution, or, admitting 
them, insists on a rescission of the contract, ana 
a dissolution of the Union, in order that they 
may give free vent to thiar hostility, unrestrained 
by pledges of faith; the other, thinking they can 
accomplish abolition in the Union, and still enjoy 
navigation acts, fishing bounties, tariffs, and in- 
ternal improvements, affect to love it, and rever- 
ence the Constitution, while accepting all the ben- 
efits it confers, and evading the duties it enjoins. 
An army with banners is preferable to a Trojan 
horse. All the anti-slavery measures which have 
been suggested are legitimate fruits of abolition, 
upon which avarice and ambition feed and batten. 
The first general abolition society in the United 
States was formed in Boston in 1832. They de- 
clared their object was " to eflect the abolition of 
slavery in the United Stales, and to obtain for 
free people of color equal civil and political rights 
[and privileges with the whites." They presented 
j to the slaveholder the alternative of '^ life or 
death." They said, " The master must manumit 
! his slave, or the slave will manumit himself" — 
j to manumit him is " to shut the flood-gates of 
' human woe and human blood" — to hold him in 
vassalage will " have a direct tendency to unsheath 
ithesivord of vengeance, revolution and death." Such 
were their avowals of purpose — such their somber 
vaticinations. Yet they only proposed to exert 
moral means. The next year the American Anti- 
Slavery Society was formed in New York. They 



17 



professed the same purposes, but proposed the 
exertion of po/i<icai, as well as moral means; to 
invoke the aid of the pulpit, the press, and the 
school to teach "that slavery is a heinous crime in 
the sight of God, and that the duty, sa/eii/, and best 
interest of all concerned require its immediate 
abandonment without expatriation;" " to invoke 
Congress to put an end to the domestic slave trade, 
to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common 
country which come under its control, especially in 
the District of Columbia, and likewise to prevent 
its extension to any State that may hereafter be 
admitted." All unlawful means in effecting it 
were however disclaimed. 

What they have achieved has been partly told. 
Their growth has kept pace with population; 
their demands have increased with their power. 
Despised, hooted, and mobbed twenty years ago, 
they now constitute a strong political party con- 
fessedly; they allege the first in point of numbers 
in the northern States. They have rent asunder 
all orthodox Christian denominations but three, 
and sectionalized them under the designations of 
northern and southern churches. They influenced 
the Methodist Church North to violate the pre- 
cepts of religion and principles of coinmon honesty 
by appropriating to its exclusiveuse the common 
property, without even the plea of necessity with 
which the highwayman excuses his robbery. 
They have induced a general adoption by those 
cliurches of their shibboleth — 710 communion icith 
slaveholders. They have supplanted the religion 
of Christ with the gospel of abolition — insomuch 
that their ministers every Sabbath proclaim war 
eigainst the South, instead of " peace, good-will 
towards men;" and teacli the damnation of slave- 
holders, instead of the salvation of sinners. They 
have rendered valueless the constitutional right 
of southern men to carry their slaves into, or 
through, several of the non-slaveholding States; 
and have made the slaveholder so odious in those 
States that he is greeted with insult and injury 
•whenever he enters them. They have made it 
cause of reproach to befriend a slaveholder. They 
have driven southern students from northern 
colleges, and many southern travelers from their 
cities and watering-places. They have extorted 
from the Legislatures of at least five northern 
States acts virtually nullifying the fugitive slave 
laws of 1793 and 1850, and violating both confed- 
ea^ate and constitutional obligations. They have 
acquired entire control of the Legislature of Mas- 
sachusetts, which has not only twice adopted a 
motion to amend the Constitution by abolishing 
slave representation in Congress, but has initi- 
ated, under its paternal auspices, that race of ab- 
sorption which one of her sons contemplates with 
complacency and doubt as to its result, by legal- 
izing the marriage of blacks and ivhites ! In Mas- 
sachusetts coarse sensualism and refined taste may 
now gratify depraved or morbid appetites in I'ree 
commerce of the sexes of every hue, from sooty 
black to Parian while, under the sanction of lawful 
wedlock! And, judging from the social affinities 
of the races thus declared, and the reported amal- 
gamation already begun in Massachusetts, the 
time may not be remote when one of her Senators 
may offer to introduce at the levees of a President 
his sable spouse, and claim for her that equality 
here which she enjoys at home ! 

And now, sir, I ask, is it surprising that the 



people of Missouri, and of the entire South, 
should regard the movement o^ Massachusetts 
for colonizing Kansas with distrust and dis- 
favor, with apprehensions for their safety, and a 
disposition to fortify and defend themselves. 
Seeing what fanaticism has achieved, and con- 
templating what it proposes, how could the people 
of Missouri foil to exert every means reconcil- 
able with constitutional or natural law to prevent 
the planting of a colony in their midst, embody- 
ing the sentiments and principles, the civil laws 
and ecclesiastical regulations maintained by the 
dominant party of Massachusetts? Had she 
proposed to convert Kansas into a penal colony, 
would Missourians have been at fault in resisting.' 
Had she proposed to transfer there the foreign 
white paupers, who, with amiable philanthro- 
py, she has forced back to their trans-atlantic 
homes, would Missouri have had no excuse in 
her example in repelling or expelling them .' 
\et, how much more detestable and dangerous 
than mendicants or criminals, are those who are 
taught by precept and example to disregard the 
Constitution and the laws, and even the Deca- 
logue itself, in order to achieve their ends? Pau- 
pers are drones who tax society, but do not 
menace its existence. Ordinary felons are content 
with a small sphere of operation, and, with a few 
victims on whom to glut their evil passions, 
and rarely exhibit in a single individual a violation 
of all the laws of the land. While they break the 
law they acknowledge its majesty, and admit the 
justice of its penalties. 

But Abolitionists deny all authority, human 
or divine, which permits involuntary servitude; 
advocate emancipation of the black race at every 
hazard, and by any sacrifice of the white race; 
counsel universal treason against the laws of man 
or God to resist imputed wrongs, and invoke 
universal rapine and desolation for their redress! 
They teach the slave that his master is a tyrant 
towards man and a traitor towards God; that 
to escape from him, by fraud or force, by false- 
hood, arson, murder, any means, is approved of 
God and all good men. They teach non-slave- 
holders to sympathize with fugitive slaves, to 
harbor them, to I'csist all who would arrest them, 
to defend them as they u'ould their household gods, 
and to violate any law which conflicts with their 
rescue. They present the slaveholder the alter- 
native offered by the highwayman to his victim, 
your property or your life. This dread prophecy 
of Abolition in 1832 has already become dire 
reality, as the loyal blood of Kennedy, Gorsuch, 
and Batcheldor attests. And, what is more 
appalling than death to the brave men of the 
land of Daniel Boone, and as horrible to their 
chaste daughters as dishonor, they proclaim, as 
a necessary incident or consequence of emanci- 
pation, the elevation of blacks to perfect equality 
with whites and a race of absorption between 
them ! What could be expected but enmity, dis- 
sension, and bloodshed between contiguous States 
with populations so antagonistic in sentiments 
and principles as Massachusetts Abolitionists and 
Missouri slaveholders? Yet Massachusetts has 
endeavored to make Kansas a seminary in which 
to plant all the abolition ideas I have enumerated, 
well knowing that such evils as domestic strife, 
fraternal bloodshed, and perhaps civil war, would 
be produced. And the Senator from Vermont, 



18 



[Mr. CoLLAMER,] professing to be a man of peace, 
and to look forward with joyous hope to that 
millennial period when nations shall no longer 
go to war, says in his report, in substance, that 
Siese evils would possibly ensue, but that Mas- 
sachusetts did right! And those other men of 
peace, the Senators from Massachusetts, [Mr. 
Sumner,] and New York, [Mr. Seward,] say 
well done by Massachusetts, and well spoken by 
the author of the report. And the Senator from 
New Hampshire, [Mr. Hale,] contemplating 
the impending strife in Kansas, but protesting 
he is not a man of war, avows that he has "some- 
times wished that God in his Providence would 
let it come !" 

When I hear such inflammatory speeches from 
those standing here as guardiana of that Consti- 
tution which was designed to insure domestic 
ti-anquillity, and who, by virtue of their senatorial 
office, have acquired an influence which all their 
talents combined would scaice impart to a private 
citizen, I am reminded of the ])riest who set fire 
to the temple with the flame he had stolen from 
tlie altar. Sir, the madness of the times has dis- 
played no more frantic exhibition than we have 
witnessed on this floor. Divested of all the drapery 
of rhetoric, the plain logic of the champions of 
Black or Red Republicanism in Kansas is this: the 
natural and necessary results of the colonization 
of Kansas with Abolitionists are domestic vio- 
lence and civil war; but these are lesser evils than 
slavery; therefore, let them come ! The simple 
solution of the issue between pro-slavery and 
anti-slavery men in Kansas, which they all anti- 
cipate with complacency, and the Senator from 
New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] with joy, is the 
bloody arbitrament of battle, and the arguments 
to be used are grape, canister, and cold steel. 
But his joy is not — 

"Tliut prniul joy which Wiirriors feci 
In iiicftiMg (beinen worthy of their steel ;" 

but the joy of one in conscious security from 
danger, while looking out from his loophole of 
retreat over fields of human carnage. 

The attempt to justify the course of Massa- 
diusetts in undertaking to control the destiny of 
Kansas by precedents, or to reconcile it with her 
obligations to her sister States, is not less insult- 
ing than disingenuous. Those who cite the set- 
tlement of the original colonies by England, or 
tlie western wildernesses by the different States 
of our Union, knoio that they were not stimulated 
by the inducements, the motives, the feelings, or 
tlie objects which gave rise to the Massachusetts 
movement towards Kansas. It was not to get 
rid of a redundant population, to wrest a wilder- 
ness from savages for the use of civilized men, 
to open new fields of commerce, to increase the 
defi:nses or add to the strength of our common 
country, that Kansas was coveted. Immigration 
to that Territory was matter of neither necessity 
nor choice. No, sir, deep-seated and rancorous 
hostility toward the South, or, if it be preferred, 
to the slaveholders of the South, originated the 
emigrant aid society. It was a demonstration of 
hostility to the South more off'ensive and inex- 
cusable than any former legislative action touch- 
ing slavery by any northern State. Hitherto, 
ofTensive legislation was intended to operate on 
persons or things within their own hmits, or, if 
beyond them, through congressional acts. Such 



were theirpersonal liberty bills, and their instruc- 
tions to their Senators* and Representatives to 
vote against the admission of slaveholding States, 
and in favor of the abolishment of slavery in 
this District. This was the first effort to enact 
State laws, to operate extra-territorially against 
slavery. It was the first crusade against slavery, 
initiated, organized, and prosecuted under the 
auspices of a State. Congress in 1850 and 1854 
had settled the doctrine of non-intervention, and 
disclaimed the power of the Federal GovernmenI 
to regulate the internal policy of the Territories, 
or to mold their domestic institutions. But this 
supremo power, disclaimed by Congress and de- 
nied to belong to the general Government of all 
the States, is arrogated by the single State of 
Massachusetts. Incensed at the neutrality of 
Congress, she has resolved to lay her own hand 
upon slavery, and crush it out from Kansas. She 
has attempted to legislate for Kansas and to gov- 
ern it through the medium of a great moneyed 
corporation, sitting in Boston. 

Knowing that slavery to some extent existed 
in that Territory, and that its proximity to Mi»- 
souri, and sameness of latitude, soil, climate, 
and productions, tended to establish that institu- 
tion — knowing that emigration proceeds mainly 
in the same parallel of latitude, and that those in 
the Eastern States who might be induced by in- 
terest, or driven by necessity to go West, would 
follow the main body of emigrants, and find 
homes in the unbroken wilderness of Illinois and 
Iowa, of Minnesota or Nebraska — those who 
controlled the legislation of Massachusetts, and 
have availed themselves of it, in order to divert 
this current of emigration from its natural and 
accustomed channel, and pour it into Kansas, 
have invoked the combined aid of the vilest pas- 
sions of depraved humanity and the most irra- 
tional and ferocious fanaticism. Sectional envy, 
jealousy, and hatred of the South, have been 
aroused by representing the repeal of the Missouri 
restriction as conceived in the wish and framed 
for the purpose of extending slavery, and aggres- 
sive in its policy upon the rights of the North; 
and the northern people have been adjured by 
their self-love and self-respect to resent the insult 
and revenge the injury. And yet the very men 
who bewail the obliteration of the Missouri re- 
striction, in affected strains of grief and indigna- 
tion, as a breach of plighted faith, never kept the 
faith when an opportunity was afforded for its 
violation for their benefit and our injury, and 
never failed to denounce the restriction and stig- 
matize it as the odious black line, or Mgerine line, 
while it existed. They talk with well-feigned 
dread of the portentous increase of the slave- 
power under that act, and of the pagt and pro- 
spective aggressions and usurpations of the " slavB 
oligarchy, "well knowing that the South has been 
retrogressing instead of advancing in relative ter- 
ritorial extent and numerical strength ; that she has 
yielded in territory and treasure to the aggrand- 
izement of the North and her own enfeeblement, 
until she is now unalile to maintain her rights in 
the Union, and is dependent ujion the Democratic 
party, the constitutional party of the North, for 
their preservation. They deprecate, in piteous 
and pious tones, the increase of slavery and the 
aggravations of the wrongs of the black race, well 
knowing that their introduction there will not add 



■inT'*-lliilmli f I Ml i1~^'f-- 



19 



one to the existing number of slaves, and will tend 
rather to ameliorate their eondition. 

Not content with appealing to anti-slavery feel- 
ing, to sympathy with the negro and hatred for 
his owner, to ambition and the love of sectional 
domination, they appealed to a passion which we 
are assured by one of the agents and orators of 
tlie emigrants' aid society never fails to unite the 
North — the love of money. They promised to 
make " a good thing of it" — that is, a scheme 
for realizing large pecuniary rewards for small 
risks. They proposed to colonize Kansas with 
anti-slavery paupers, men " who could not do with- 
out the advantages offered them by the society" — " to 
be retained in its cause" — " to be ^uider control of 
tliat organization" — " to be bound to it" — " to be 
under bonds to make Kansas a free State." I quote 
from the address of Mr. Thayer, the agent of the 
society. The organization was to secure them 
cheap transportation to Kansas, and there to build 
their dwellings, mills, churches, and school- 
houses. Thus much has been conceded by a 
prominent member of the emigrants' aid society, 
Mr. Thayer, in his public address. Thus much 
of the mode of working and the materials to be 
used has leaked out of Mr. Thayerin his appeals 
to the northern public for aid in this enterprise. 
Although, in the same address, he affects that the 
company will and do transport all who apply for 
aid without inquiring for their views of slavery, 
yet his own admissions negative this assertion. 
He pledges, upon condition of certain moneyed 
contributions, to send enough men under bonds to 
make Kansas a free State. He admits that those 
sent cannot do witho^U the advantages afforded them 
by the society ; that they are its retainers under its 
control — bound to it as apprentices. 

The emigrants' aid men are, confessedly, not 
freemen, but villeins in the service of the com- 
pany; not free agents, but agents of the company; 
dependents, unable to stand alone; beneficiaries, 
living on the bounty of their patrons. They go 
to Kansas, not of their own will or choice, butby 
the inducements offered by the company. They 
do not go relying on their own strong arms and 
brave hearts for support, but trusting to the com- 
pany to afford them those advantages they cannot 
do without. They do not go to originate a State, 
but to mold one after the model prescribed in 
Massachusetts. Nor are Mr. Thayer's declara- 
tions the only evidence afforded that those emi- 
grants are the hirelings, dependents, and liege- 
men of that society. The entire programme of 
tlieir proceedings, from the advent of the first 
cargo landed in Kansas up to the last scene of the 
farce enacted by the mock Legislature at Topeka, 
had been published in Boston and New York in 
advance of the various performances. The east- 
ern seers have enjoyed the rare triumph of wit- 
nessing the complete fulfillment of theirprophecies 
in Kansas; but they have consulted the organs of 
tlie aid society who keep the book of fate for 
tliat Territory. Indeed, the Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts [Mr. Wilson] has displayed the same 
prophetic spirit on this floor, having told us sev- 
eral weeks in advance what has been done by the 
amateur Legislature at Topeka. 

But, sir, there is one part of the machinery of 
the incorporation for ruling Kansas that has not 
been fully explained; and that is, when and how 
the stockholders are to derive tlie profits of their 



investments. Whether to be paid in money, in 
land, or in labor, by their hirelings; whether in 
speculations in town lots, or the public lands, or 
the Lidian reservations, is somewhat questiona- 
ble. The bold blunder of Governor Reeder, how- 
ever, coupled with the statements of the secretary 
of the emigrant aid company, directing what sites 
are to be located for the company, and for what 
purposes, show that they propose to speculate 
on the ignorance and helplessness of the Indians 
in getting possession of their lands, and, perhaps, 
on the frauds and perjuries of their hand-plants 
whom they may place as settlers and preemptors 
on the Government lands. We are warranted, 
by the orders of the secretary and the example of 
the Governor, in saying that they mean to get 
land — honestly, perhaps, if they can; but, if not, 
still they mean to get land. They are not scru- 
pulous about laws or treaties. Enough of their 
policy has been developed by their organs to 
show that the scheme is at war with the just and 
liberal spirit of the land laws of the United States, 
which were intended to secure homesteads, on 
easy terms, to the landless, and to prevent spec- 
ulations in the public domain, or the appropria- 
tion of large bodies of it by individuals, or by 
associations, with great moneyed capitals. 

But, if combinations of little bands of specu- 
lators, united in interest by small capital, should 
endanger popular rights, and excite the appre- 
hensions of Congress, so as to induce the most 
stringent legislation to defeat their schemes, how 
much more dangerous and detestable a State cor- 
poration, whose moneyed capital is told by mil- 
lions, and which aims at the appropriation of an 
entire Territory to the exclusion of the people 
of fifteen States of the Union! Individuals, or 
private companies, would absorb a few sections, 
or, at most, a township, while nothing short of a 
Territory will satiate the State corporation's lust 
of dominion. I have heard of the hardy pioneers 
organizing and arming themselves, preparatory 
to an approaching sale of the public lands, in 
order to silence by force, if necessary, the land 
monopolists who should attempt to purchase 
their humble homes. Is it surprising, that this 
mammoth corporation, which proposes to grasp 
a wilderness, whose boundaries are described by 
parallels of latitude and longitude, and settle it 
with its tenants, should excite the indignation, 
and provo'fe:e the resentment and resistance of 
those who dwell upon its borders? 

And is it possible that any Senator will justify 
these contemplated schemes of land monopoly 
by the emigrant aid society.' If Massachusetts, 
or a Massachusetts corporation, had proposed to 
buy the Territory, Congress would not dare sell 
it on any condition. If the State, or its corpora- 
tion, through its agents, offered to enter the lands 
of the Territory, it would not be permitted at the 
land offices, or tolerated by the Government. 
Wherein lies the difference between the State or 
its corporation buying the Territory or entering 
the lands there, and the hireling emissaries of the 
State doing the one or the other for the benefit of 
the corporation .' There is none in principle; it 
is achieving the same thing by different means. 
It is assuming dominion in Uie former case, openly 
and directly; in the later, covertly and indirectly. 
The former is honest; the latter dishonest. That 
it was intended and proposed to appropriate the 



20 



Territory to Free-Soilers by money power, the 
power of associated capital, is distinctly pr®- 
claimed. The same Mr. Thayer says, comparing 
the emigrant aid society with the southern emi- 
grants, " we put our riches against their poverty, 
and say they cannot stand them." I Could cite 
many similar declarations to show that land mo- 
nopoly by the strength of associated capital was 
its aim and object. , 

Although the Constitution nowhefe inhibits 
the intervention of a State in the affairs of a Terri- 
tory, yet the attempt of Massachusetts to govern 
Kansas by laws passed in a State Legislature at 
Boston, would clearly be an invasion of the rights 
of other States to which they would scarcely 
submit. This, I presume, will be conceded by 
.all the Senate, except, perhaps, the Senator from 
New York, [Mr. Seward,] who declared, that 
" whatever is not cxpresalij forbidden by the Federal 
Constitution may lawfully be done by the. States!" — 
a sentiment not only hostile to the peace of the 
Union, but to public virtue and State honor. But 
wherein is there any real or practical difference 
in Massachusetts passing laws to operate on the 
people of Kansas, and governing them through 
tlie medium of a State corporation sitting in Bos- 
ton ? If there be any, it is in favor of the gov- 
ernment of the State, rather than of her corpora- 
tion. Nor did the patrons of this eastern emigra- 
tion rely upon the strength of money and numbers 
alone, to abolitionize Kansas. Despite the positive 
denials of their champions on tliis floor, their 
hirelings were equipped for violence and war. 
They did not carry with them the implements of 
industry, but the instruments of death. Cannon 
and Sharpe's rifles were their tools of trade. 

It has been said on this floor, that fire-arms 
were not carried there until the invasion of the 
"Border Ruflians." To disprove this assertion, 
I will not adduce the testimony of Missourians, 
members of Congress, and private citizens, or of 
the Delegate from Kansas, but I olTcr that of the 
head and front of Black Republicanism, if not its 
embodiment — the editor of the New York Trib- 
In his orders, issued early in March last, 



une. 



he tells his subalterns they "must continue to do 
what they har^e been doing ever since the passage of 
Ihc Kansas-J^ebraska act,'' — "pour free settlers into 
Kansas well armed tcith Sharjie's rifles or other 
convenient weapons." Who of his jiprty will 
dare commit petit treason, by denying the truth 
of his assertion ? The emigrant aid society, or 
eome confederate association, supplied their first 
emigrants with Sharpo's rifles; which they were 
taught, by pious parsons, learned professors, and 
patriotic statesmen, were more efiieient moral 
agents than bibles, among slaveholders. They 
were sent prepared, if they f^iiled to triumph with 
the missive of the ballot-box, to resort to the 
missive of the cartridge-box. Physical force was 
contemplated, if other means failed to drive slave- 
holders from that Territory. Abolition presses 
were filled with such advice, and, indeed, the 
speeches of the Senators from which 1 have 
quoted suggest the same thing. 

If, sir, those emigrants believed with the Sen- 
ator from Ohio, [Mr. Wade,] that slaveholders 
were the enemies of the northern people — Van- 
dals, who had stolen the rights of the North; or 
with the Senator from New York, [Mr. Seward,] 
that slaveholders were a dishonorable and perfid- 



ious privileged class; or With the Senator froirl 
Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumver] that slaveholders 
were heartless, grasping, tyrannical robbers, banded 
together for spoliation; or believed, with all those 
Senators, that there was no more freedom for 
non-slaveholders than for slaVcs in the South, 
who were alike governed with whips, pistols, 
and knives, by slaveholders; sir, if they credited 
these honorable and i)e?'acious Senators, how could 
they — plain, honest, unsophisticated men, who 
had never learned to smile and stab — be so re- 
gardless of self-preservation as to go unarmed tD 
Kansas? And may I not add, how could they 
neglect the pious, patriotic, and self-=defensive 
task ofexpelling slaveholders from thatTi'rritory.' 

Sir, I will dwell no longer on this point. The 
flame of civil war in Kansas was kindled by men 
who minister profanely in this temple of the 
Union, as well as by priests who impiously des- 
ecrate the house of God. They are even now 
industriously heaping fuel on the flame they have 
kindled. Repining at their failure to drive south- 
ern men from Kansas, they are now charging; 
upon them and the Prcsidi>nt oppression of the 
people of the Territory. Whom do they mean by 
the people of Kansas? — the Free-Soil and free- 
State men, who have endeavored to extemporize 
an independent and equal member of the Union. 
And what is their number? Seven hundred and 
nineteen men, by their own counting! So said 
their own organ — the Herald of Freedom— pub- 
lished in Kansas, instating the vote for the Free 
constitution. This fact was presented by the 
Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Jones] nearly two 
months ago; and it has never been disproved, or, 
I believe, contradicted, brought in question, ov 
alluded to, by the opposition. The Red or Black 
Republican party in Kansas is composed of a 
small minority of the people, by their Own con- 
fession — of scarcely more than one tenth of the 
legal voters of the Territory ! To give this mi- 
rity the control of that Territory, is the imme- 
diate object of all the clamor, the weeping, and 
wailing, and gnashing of teeth, which we have 
heard. To obtain for that party the control of 
this Government in order to satisfy the avarice 
and ambition of its leaders, is the ulte.ior purpose. 
The ofT.'nse of the President and the Democracy 
is, that they will not yield to the arrogant de- 
mands of that minority and their leaders upon 
this floor. 

[Here Mr. Clay was obliged, by hoarseness 
of voice and physical exhaustion, to suspend his 
remarks. He said he had something more to say 
in reply to the Senator from New York, [Mr. 
Seward,] which, if his health permitted, he would 
deliver hereafter. He asked to print some con- 
cluding reflections, which he had not now tlie 
voice to utter.] 

Yes, sir, it is the avarice and ambition of the 
feui that has aroused and is stimulating the spirit 
of abolition and of sectional domination to seize 
upon Kansas and wrest it from southern settlers 
by fraud or by force. 

Fanaticism and sectionalism serve as waves in 
the sea of popular passion, which selfish aspirants 
are lashing into fury, that they may ride upon 
their crests into ofiice. It is not the elevation of 
the negro to perfect equality with the white man 
they seek, but the elevation of themselves to the 
high places of the Government. It is not for the 



21 



defense of the North against the aggressions and 
usurpations of the South that they labor, but for 
the destruction of the South, which stands as a 
hon in the pathway of their preferment to the 
Presidency, the Cabinet, and our foreign Ministry. 
It is not to secure Kansas for free labor that they 
struggle, but to secure it as a stepping-stone for 
their own self-aggrandizement. Through all the 
habiliments of language, with which they cloak 
their designs, se//is as apparent as was the person 
of the Greek courtesan beneath the gauzy veil 
with which she was invested. To satiate their 
lust to shine and rule, they will imperil not only 
present peace and prosperity, but blast the bright 
nopes of the future greatness and glory of our 
common country. Determined to rule or ruin, 
they strive to consolidate the North to struggle 
for sectional dominion over the South, not only 
under the forms of peace, but to enter the listed 
field, and, by civil war, to enforce its mandates 
at the point of the sword. 

But, sir, I hope that the smooth and insidious 
pretenses by which they are striving to enkindle 
a war of opposing sectional interests, more dread- 
ful than foreign invasion, will be exposed and 
seen by the northern people in time to forestall 
their efforts, disappoint their selfish hopes, and 
defeat their traitorous designs. 

There is, I trust and believe, in the Democratic 
party and the few remaining national Whigs of 
the North, an enlarged patriotism which no ap- 
parent sectional interest can corrupt, and a love 
of justice which no selfish sophistry can seduce. 
They know that the assertion that the men of 
the North and the men of the South are enemies, 
is a libel upon both, and an attempted fraud upon 
both, in order to serve the selfish ambition of 
pretended friends of one and undisguised foes of 
the other section of the Union. They know that 
in war southern blood has been freely shed in 
defense of northern soil, northern shipping, and 
northern seamen; and that southern men never 
paused to count their costs or calculate their gains 
when the interest or the honor of any portion of 
the Union was assailed by foreign foes. They 
know that in peace the South has lavished her 
golden treasures upon every industrial interest 
of the North, while neither claiming nor asking 
Federal bounties for any industrial interest of her 
own. They know that the South has yielded her 
own territory, as well as the common territory 
won mainly by her diplomacy or valor, to the 
North, with an unselfishness and generosity for 
which no parallel can be found in the history of 
any other confederate States. They know that the 
South has never claimed or enjoyed more than 
her share of the trusts and honors of the Federal 
Government; and that, if her sons have oftener 
filled the presidency, it was by the will of north- 
ern no less than southern freemen. They know 
that the South asks nothing that the North cannot 
grant and ought not to grant. They know that 



the South is, and will ever be, in a minority in 
both Houses of Congress, and is powerless for 
aggression on the North in peace and under 
the forms of law. They know that, if Kansas 
should become a slave State, the balance of power 
will be, and forever continue, with the North. 
They know that northern interests and northern 
rights are neither menaced nor endangered by the 
South. And, above all, I trust they not only 
know, but feel, that the freemen of the South are 
j fellow-countrymen, friends, and equals, with 
■whom they are affiliated, not only by compacts 
under the same Federal Government, but by re- 
ciprocal interests and congenial principles; and 
not only by those but by mystic chords of sym- 
pathy — as strong, though not so sacred, as solemn 
pledges of faith — growing out of kindred blood, a 
common language, historic recollections of united 
trials and united triumphs in the past, and a 
cherished love of their undivided heritage of glory 
in the present. 

But, sir, if, contrary to my hopes and expect- 
ations. Black Republicanism shall achieve the 
triumph at the North it so vauntingly predicts; 
if its leaders shall succeed there in identifying 
patriotism with sectionalism, liberty with licen- 
tiousness, loyalty to the Constitution with dis- 
loyalty to the rights of man, justice to the South 
with injustice to the North, southern men with 
enemies, and their northern friends with traitors; 
if its loaders shall raise a storm of infuriate 
fanaticism and vindictive sectional malice, which, 
sweeping over the North, shall overwhelm and 
prostrate the few heroic champions of the Con- 
stitution, of the equality of the States and the 
equality of their citizens,who now stand sentinels 
over the sacred trust of popular and State rights; 
if its leaders, fresh from fields of sectional victory, 
shall possess themselves of the executive and legis- 
lative branches of this Government — 1 know not 
what the South will do, but I think I know what 
she ought to do, in resenting insult offered and 
resisting injuries meditated, in vindicating her 
honor and preventing her humiliation. I trust, 
sir, despite the insolent and insulting taunts of 
poverty, weakness, and dependence on the Union, 
hurled at her by her enemies even on this floor, 
that she will not take counsel of her fears but of 
her hopes, rather — hopes inspired by proud recol- 
lections of past heroic achievements, by exulting 
consciousness of her present power, by glowing 
visions of her future greatness, and by that indig- 
nant fervor of soul which her wounded honor and 
imperiled independence must enkindle. I trust, 
sir, that, whenever Black Repubhcanism shall 
take possession of this Government, and weigh 
in its balances, and against its avarice and ambi- 
tion, the honor and the rights of the South, she 
will no't stoop to impetrate justice or pause to ex- 
postulate, but will boldly throw her sword into 
the scale and assert her natural privilege of self- 
defense. 



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